Copyright

by

Charles P. Patterson

2009

The Dissertation Committee for Charles P. Patterson certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:

A Fruitful Bough: The Old Testament Story of Joseph in Medieval and Golden Age

Spanish Literature

Committee:

______Cory Reed, Supervisor

______Madeline Sutherland-Meier

______James Nicolopulos

______Ivan Teixeira

______Harold Liebowitz

A Fruitful Bough: The Old Testament Story of Joseph in Medieval and Golden Age

Spanish Literature

by

Charles P. Patterson, B.A.; M.A.

Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

The University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2009

To my wife and daughters.

Acknowledgements

I would first like to express my profound gratitude to my supervisor, Cory Reed, for his tremendous efficiency and helpful feedback. I am also thankful to the other committee members, Madeline Sutherland-Meier, James Nicolopolus, Ivan Teixeira, and

Harold Liebowitz, for their advice and support. My wife, Dayna, has been a self- proclaimed “dissertation widow” for the past year, and I am appreciative of her patience with me as she has shouldered extra family responsibilities. She also deserves credit for being my sounding board, editor, and cheerleader throughout this process. Finally, I am grateful to my mother, who never expected any less of me, and to my father, who taught me the story of Joseph on a Monday night long ago.

v

A Fruitful Bough: The Old Testament Story of Joseph in Medieval and Golden Age

Spanish Literature

Charles P. Patterson, Ph.D.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2009

Supervisor: Cory Reed

The Old Testament story of Joseph is common to the Christians, Muslims, and

Jews of medieval Spain, and each group drew upon its own and other exegetical traditions to produce literary versions of the biblical tale. After the expulsion of the latter two groups, several Hispanic playwrights, including such notable figures as Lope de

Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, continued to produce theatrical versions of the Josephine legend throughout the Golden Age. Most of these plays attained a great deal of popularity. In spite of the importance of these works in early

Spanish culture, recent scholarship has paid comparatively little attention to them. The present study is meant to remedy that situation. By drawing upon the theoretical concepts of Edward Said, Amin Maalouf, Jonathan Z. Smith, and others regarding identity and

Otherness, I demonstrate how each adaptation of the story constructs or evaluates religious and national identity. Medieval prose and poetic adaptations written by representatives of each of the three monotheistic faiths reveal an attempt to maintain the boundaries of religious identity within a multicultural context. Sixteenth-century

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theatrical versions deal with the post-expulsion identity crisis by proposing a more inclusive attitude towards New Christians. Finally, under the Baroque influence of the late seventeenth century, adaptations of the Joseph story become increasingly metatheatrical. This literary self-reflection serves to interrogate the nature of identity and reveal its constructedness. Given the importance of identity issues in current scholarship, this analysis suggests the need for increased critical attention to be paid to the Spanish

Josephine tradition.

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Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1: Boundary Maintenance in Medieval Prose Versions...... 36

Alfonso X El Sabio’s General estoria: Reconciliation and Protonational Identity...... 41

Boundary-Maintenance and Jewish Ethnicity in the Sefer ha-Yasar...... 63

Muslim Religious Survival in the Leyenda de José ...... 77

Chapter 2: Appropriation and Boundary Maintenance in Fourteenth-Century Narrative Poetry...... 93

The Coplas de Yosef: Poetry in Purim, and Purim in Poetry ...... 94

Suffering, Forgiveness, and Anti-Acculturation in the Poema de José...... 104

Chapter 3: The Search for a More Inclusive National Identity in Sixteenth-Century Drama ...... 121

Unity in the Tragedia Josephina...... 126

The Marriage of Peoples in Los desposorios de José...... 152

A More Secular Converso Perspective in Lope de Vega’s Los trabajos de Jacob ...... 173

Chapter 4: The Functions of Metatheater in the Late Seventeenth Century ...... 196

Mira’s Anthropocentric Metatheater in El más feliz cautiverio...... 206

Theocentric Metatheater in Calderón’s Sueños hay que verdad son...... 220

Metatheater and the Limitations of Exegesis in Sor Juana’s El cetro de José.... 236

Conclusion...... 253

Works Cited...... 258

Vita...... 277

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Introduction

Between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries Spanish authors representing each of the three monotheistic religions produced numerous literary adaptations of the

Old Testament Story of Joseph. Several of these versions were written by well-known authors, such as Alfonso el Sabio, Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and Sor

Juana Inés de la Cruz. Many of these works are veritable gems of Spanish literature in terms of poetic and dramatic artistry. In addition, “Joseph the Chaste” has continued to play an important role in Spanish literature and culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 Despite all of this, the recent critical attention that these works have received has been minimal.2 Part of the purpose of this study is to rectify this situation. I argue that, by comparing multiple versions of the same scriptural story, it is possible to analyze the changing issues of identity during the pre- and early modern centuries. In this introduction, I will first discuss my methodology and guiding principles in approaching these issues. Then I will briefly summarize the Joseph story according to scripture, exegesis, and Spanish literature.

1 See, for example, Juan Valera’s discussion of “el hijo predilecto de Jacob” in Pepita Jiménez 196. Joseph was an important figure in Corpus Christi celebrations in Spain (Very) and the New World (Arango L.). 2 Michael McGaha has published English translations of nearly all of the texts that I study here, along with insightful introductions to each, in Coat and Story. These publications are valuable because they lay the foundation for further critical attention. There is also a handful of studies of the individual works published by McGaha and others, which I review in the following chapters. My study is, to my knowledge, the first monograph to analyze the entire Spanish Josephine tradition from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries using a unified approach. 1

Although all of the works that I examine tell basically the same story, each is a unique combination of exegetical tradition and authorial innovation, and each reflects the ideology, preoccupations, and worldview of the writer who created it and the audience to which it was directed. According to Scott Carpenter

Looking at the cultural materials that appeal or flop at various historical

moments in assorted places can teach us a good deal about the

communities that produce and consume them; inversely, understanding

aspects of a culture helps us get a purchase on how a text becomes

meaningful in a given context. (123)

As discussed above, the Joseph story had great appeal in medieval and early modern

Spanish society. Thus the methodology that I employ in my study is to examine, on the one hand, what each author’s choice and handling of details tells us about the context

(temporal, religious, and geographic) in which it was written. At the same time, I seek to contextualize each work in order to shed light on how themes inherent in the story, such as betrayal, captivity, slavery, and others, would have taken on a particular and perhaps unique meaning within that context.

The possibilities that such a methodology presents could be endless, but my focus is on the construction of identity and alterity in a multicultural society. The questions that

I explore include: How does each author construct ethno-religious identity through the retelling of the Josephine legend? How does he/she construct the Other? What terms does each impose on the relationships between these groups? What are the socio-political implications (and complications) of these discourses? 2

The Joseph story lends itself particularly well to an examination of these issues because, in essence, it is the story of an individual who is rejected by his own culture, becomes successful in another culture, becomes reconciled again to his origins, and then joins together the two cultures that now form his identity. I argue that each version allegorizes this basic storyline in a way that reflects a unique view of the relationships between the three Spanish cultures. The faithful of each religion lay claim to Joseph as one of their own, and the authors of these retellings use a number of techniques to make this explicit in each text.

In addition to the coming together of cultures narrated in the story, the literary versions of the Joseph tale are themselves hybrid narratives because they include a cross- pollination of details from the three religions that claim the story. In other words, to use

Homi Bhabha’s terminology, the Spanish retellings of the Joseph legend lie within the

“Third Space” between cultures,

which constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that

the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that

even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistorized, and read

anew. (208)

By understanding the context for each version, it becomes possible to read how the various symbols in the story, whatever their source, are “read anew” according to the worldview of its author. This will enhance our knowledge of the dynamics of cultural hybridity.

3

To guide me in my analysis, I rely on the notions set forth by a number of theorists and scholars concerning identity, Otherness, and cultural hybridity. I proceed under the assumption that identity is a construction. As Edward Said says, “The job facing the cultural intellectual is . . . not to accept the politics of identity as given, but to show how all representations are constructed, for what purpose, by whom, and with what components” (Culture 314). Although Said mainly dealt with nineteenth- and twentieth- century imperialist projects, his view of the critic’s role in analyzing the dynamics of identity construction is particularly applicable to a pre- and early modern Spanish context.3 Mary Quinn speaks of a “Spanish obsession with self-identification” during that time period, which was “compounded by the atmosphere of the European

Counterreformation and the disillusionments of the Renaissance” (126). This self- identification often defied reality:

The myth of the Reconquista touts Spain’s transformation from colonized

to colonizer as a triumph of Christianity and of non-Semitic ‘Goths,’ yet

the reality of the sixteenth century is a multiethnic and thoroughly Semitic

Spain. (Fuchs 77)

3 For more developed discussions of the application of Saidian thought to early modern Spanish texts, see Quinn, “Nostalgic Identities”; and Groundland, “Morisco Hybridity.” Barbara Fuchs goes so far as to give this approach its own name, “imperium studies” (“Imperium Studies”). It is important to note that Said himself calls for this type of adaptation: “My argument is that each humanist investigation must formulate the nature of that connection [between knowledge and politics] in the specific context of the study, the subject matter, and its historical circumstances” (Orientalism 15).

4

In my analysis of the various Joseph stories I examine both the purposes and the dynamics of identity formation amongst the three Spanish cultures.

Although the specific dynamics of this construction of identity differ between ethnic groups and time periods, one aspect that is constant is the dependence on the Other for one’s own identity formation. In an entry on the term “alterity,” the reference work

Key Concepts in Postcolonial Studies says, “whether seen in the context of ideology, psychoanalysis or discourse, the ‘construction’ of the subject itself can be seen to be inseparable from the construction of its others” (Ashcroft et al. 9). Religion scholar

Jonathan Z. Smith points out that “the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is present in our earliest written records” (15), and the contemporary essayist Amin Maalouf notes that

“The identity a person lays claim to is often based, in reverse, on that of his enemy” (14).

The concept is germane to Said’s work; indeed perhaps the most succinct definition he gives of his term “Orientalism” is “a collective notion identifying ‘us’ Europeans as against all ‘those’ non-Europeans” (Orientalism 7). Said’s European-Oriental dichotomy becomes problematic in medieval and early modern Spain, where the process of Othering takes place not between such geographic entities as Europe and the Orient, but rather between coexisting religious groups, but the concept is applicable nonetheless. Quinn makes this very application, and says,

The fact that it is easier to define what one is not, as opposed to what one

is, ought not to be surprising in any creation of national identity and in

5

particular in the creation of Spain’s which . . . was for centuries

constructed in contrast to Jewish and Muslim castes. (67)4

The construction of group identity against the Other is an inherently political process, and is rarely benign. Smith points out that “Difference most frequently entails a hierarchy of prestige and the concomitant political ranking of superordinate and subordinate” (5). Thus, the construction of identity and Otherness is often part of a hegemonic discourse. Said says that “Orientalism depends for its strategy on . . . flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand”

(Orientalism 7, italics in original). In the case of early modern Spain, it is the Christians who eventually came to dominate Spanish territory and initiate the process of nation building, and it is this “so-called ‘reconquest’ of the Iberian Peninsula by the Northern,

Christian kingdoms . . . [that] served to create both a new national territory and also an identifying myth” (Quinn 2). The efforts to establish superiority over the Jewish or

Muslim Other is apparent in varying degrees and manifestations in the Christian versions of the Joseph story.

Marginalized groups also participate in identity politics, asserting their identity as a form of resistance. According to Said, “Never was it the case that the imperial encounter pitted an active Western intruder against a supine or inert non-Western native;

4 In fact, for Quinn this construction of identity in contrast to the Jewish and Muslim Other is so crucial in Spain that their expulsions in 1492 and 1611 made it so that the Christians “were incapable of defining themselves on their own” (24). This leads to “an ineluctable nostalgia for the period preceding Reconquest and expulsion . . . a nostalgia that ultimately finds expression in the novel genre” (24). 6

there was always some form of active resistance” (Culture xii). Indeed, several forms of resistance are either explicitly or implicitly expressed in Jewish and Moorish versions of the Josephine legend written during the period of Christian ascendancy. This resistance is expressed in a number of ways. One is the conscious effort to assert Jewishness or

Muslimness through the story. Maalouf observes that “When someone feels that his language is despised, his religion ridiculed and his culture disparaged, he is likely to react by flaunting the signs of his difference” (43). While this type of cultural ostentation is often a first line of resistance, it is important to keep in mind that “opposition and resistance . . . are articulated together on a largely common although disputed terrain provided by culture” (Said, Culture 200). Thus, another form of resistance discourse is appropriation, which is defined as

the ways in which post-colonial societies take over those aspects of the

imperial culture—language, forms of writing, film, theatre, even modes of

thought and argument such as rationalism, logic and analysis—that may

be of use to them in articulating their own social and cultural identities.

(Ashcroft et al. 1)

The appropriation of literary genres in particular is apparent in most of the Jewish and

Muslim texts examined in this study.

Both the hegemonic and counter discourses are undermined, however, by the inherent hybridity of culture. Recognizing the difficulty of the identity binary, Maalouf says, “Identity can’t be compartmentalised. You can’t divide it up into halves or thirds or any other separate segments” (2). Said also acknowledges that the European-Oriental 7

dichotomy is in fact a means by which Europe set “itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (Orientalism 4). Smith reiterates the idea of Other as Self: “This is not a matter of the ‘far,’ but, preeminently of the ‘near.’ The problem is not alterity, but similarity—at times, even identity. A ‘theory of the other’ is but another way of phrasing a ‘theory of the self’” (47).

Recognizing, therefore, the constructedness of all assertions of cultural identity, I also explore the inevitable tri-cultural hybridity of each Joseph retelling. Said emphasizes this aspect far more in his Culture and Imperialism than in Orientalism, noting that,

“Partly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic”

(Culture xxv). This assumption is particularly important to my study because, even as each of Spain’s monotheistic religions stakes claim to Joseph,

Culture is never just a matter of ownership, of borrowing and lending with

absolute debtors and creditors, but rather of appropriations, common

experiences, and interdependencies of all kinds among different cultures.”

(Culture 217)

According to Bill Ashcroft, this scholarly emphasis on hybridity is important in order to

understand the multiplicity of identities found in the Iberian Peninsula

after the reconquest and the ways that non-Christian cultures continued to

permeate cultural production even after their supposed extermination from

Spanish soil. Because hybridity offers a means of ‘evading the replication

of binary categories of the past,’ it is the perfect model for discussing 8

Spanish sixteenth-century identity—it avoids simple Othering of Jews and

Muslims pitted against Christians, while taking into account the important

and covert continuation of their presence. (qtd. in Quinn 100-01)

To keep ever present the hybridity of culture and identity, then, is the way that the modern critic “may elude the politics of polarity,” as Homi Bhabha puts it (209). It is this tension between the discourse of religious identity and the reality of cultural hybridity that makes the Spanish retellings of Joseph so engaging, relevant, and worthy of study.

Before analyzing in greater detail the issues explained above in the Spanish

Josephine tradition, some discussion of the scriptural versions is in order. Although many of its themes and motifs are nearly universal,5 its specific origins are rooted in the ancient

Near East. As Donald B. Redford says, “The best examples [of similar stories] come from Egypt and include the Shipwrecked Sailor, the Doomed Prince, the Blinding of

Truth, and the first part of the Tale of Two Brothers” (67). Shalom Goldman characterizes it as one of the biblical “products of an Heroic Age” (45). Whatever its origins, it comes to play an integral part within the Bible as a whole. Marc S. Bernstein notes that the tale serves to “set the stage for Israelite liberation under Moses, the revelation at Sinai, the consolidation of national identity, and the conquest of Canaan— that is, the realization of Jewish peoplehood” (141).

The Genesis account begins with Jacob’s favoritism towards Joseph, materialized in the form of an “ornamented coat,” and his brothers’ subsequent envy. It also begins with the first of several dreams that will prove pivotal to the story’s action. In this case,

5 For example, see Yohannan for Joseph motifs in folklore from around the world. 9

Joseph dreams that he sees his brothers’ sheaves bowing to his sheaves and their stars bowing down to his star, indicating his future domination over them, which only exacerbates their envy towards him. This leads to their decision to kill Joseph when Jacob sends the youth to check on his brothers while they are watching the herds. Reuben stops them from killing him and instead has him thrown into a well with the intention of returning to rescue him. Upon Judah’s suggestion, the brothers commute Joseph’s sentence to slavery and sell him to Ishmaelite merchants headed for Egypt. In order to explain his absence, the brothers stain his coat in blood and show it to Jacob.

In Egypt, Joseph is sold to Potiphar, who is described as “an official of Pharaoh, and chief of the guard” (Gen. 39:1).6 Here the biblical account emphasizes God’s favor towards Potiphar for Joseph’s sake, for which Joseph is made Potiphar’s steward.

Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce Joseph, and, citing a fear of sinning against God, he flees from her. She then accuses him of trying to seduce her, leading to his imprisonment.

In prison, Joseph once again receives special favor: “And the dungeon warden put in

Yosef’s hands all the prisoners that were in the dungeon house; / whatever had to be done there, it was he that did it” (Gen. 39: 22). While Joseph is in prison, two of Pharaoh’s servants are sent there. Once again dreams play a pivotal role as one of his prison mates, the butler, dreams of himself pressing grapes into Pharaoh’s cup, while the other, the baker, dreams that he has three baskets on his head while birds eat from the top one.

Joseph is able to interpret their dreams and accurately predict the butler’s restoration to favor and the baker’s death by hanging. It is this ability to interpret dreams that leads to

6 Unless otherwise indicated, all biblical quotations come from The Five Books. 10

Joseph being summoned to interpret a dream for Pharaoh. Upon doing so successfully, he is elevated to second in command of Egypt and put in charge of preparing the nation for the famines predicted in the dreams.

As predicted by Joseph, the famine begins in Egypt and the surrounding area.

Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy supplies, which brings them unknowingly into contact with Joseph. Taking advantage of the fact that they do not recognize him, he accuses them of spying and demands as proof of their innocence that they leave their brother Simeon as a hostage and bring back Benjamin. At the same time, he has their silver hidden in their sacks of grain. Jacob is grief stricken at the brothers’ report and at first refuses to allow them to take Benjamin to Egypt. When supplies run out, however, he consents to allow Judah to take personal responsibility for the youngest son as they return to Egypt. This time, Joseph throws a banquet for them, but then has his goblet hidden in Benjamin’s sack. He has the brothers searched as they are traveling home, and

Benjamin is arrested. Judah makes a moving defense on his behalf, following which

Joseph finally reveals his identity to them. Fox explains:

Some have questioned the morality of Yosef’s actions, seeing that the

aged Yaakov might well have died while the test was progressing, without

ever finding out that Yosef had survived. But that is not the point of the

story. What it is trying to teach (among other things) is a lesson about

crime and repentance. Only by recreating something of the original

situation—the brothers are again in control of the life and death of a son of

11

Rahel—can Yosef be sure that they have changed. Once the brothers pass

the test, life and covenant can then continue. (202, italics in original)

Thus, Joseph’s treatment of his brothers is in fact a test to see if they had changed. Fox further explains: “In revealing his true identity at last, Yosef makes two points: first, that it was all part of God’s plan; and second, that the family must immediately prepare for migration to Egypt. Thus the personal story is intertwined with the national one . . .”

(212). The story becomes, in a sense, a foundational legend that explains the reconciliation of two nations, the Hebrew and the Egyptian. Joseph is an intermediary character, rejected by both of these nations, but eventually able to bring them together under his leadership.

While Jews and Christians share the Genesis account of Joseph, Muslims view the quranic version as canonical. Just as the biblical narrative is a product of the ancient

Middle Eastern context in which it was produced, Islam’s Joseph (Yusuf) comes from the seventh-century Arabian Peninsula cultural milieu. By this time, Jews and Christians had already developed exegetical traditions around the Joseph story that had passed from the synagogue and seminary to the oral tradition in the area. Thus M.S. Stern says that “ . . .

[quranic] stories such as that of Joseph bear the clear markings of the rabbinic tradition,” and notes “It is clear that when Muhammad mentions biblical figures and tells of their lives, his audience already knows something of them” (193-94). Speaking of the Joseph surah in particular, John MacDonald says, “On a close examination . . . it becomes clear that the Prophet was acquainted with traditions not contained in the Bible, but found in later Jewish legends about Joseph . . .” (113). Kugel points out that, although Muhammad 12

draws upon these exegetical traditions, his purpose is not exegetical in nature: “the

Qur’an, which has no interest in biblical exegesis as such, has thus simply taken over a bit of traditional exegesis that was also a good story, and woven it into its retelling of the doings of the hero Yusuf” (55).

Like its biblical counterpart, the Joseph story is the Qur’an’s longest and most developed single narrative. It is “the Koran’s most comprehensive treatment of any specifically biblical subject” (Stern 193). Unlike the Bible, the Qur’an does not follow a historical narrative, but is rather a collection of separate revelations. Therefore the

Muslim Joseph story lacks the chronological and foundational importance that it has for the Jews. It contains no mention of timeframe, and gives very few names. In addition to this uchronic nature, Anthony H. Johns points out that

. . . the Qur’anic presentation of the material may to the westerner appear

disjointed and incomplete, requiring its readers to supply out of their

imaginations or prior knowledge, both the links between the events

occurring in the narrative and the framework in which they are set,

without which the story could not exist. (30)

Kugel, examining one plot difference between the biblical and quranic versions, says that

“this change . . . seriously flawed the sequence of events, particularly if one puts it alongside the biblical narrative” (60). Nicolas Starkovsky’s answer to this general impression of disjointedness is that “A believer does not seek continuity in a story. The

Prophet is not a historian, but a reporter of ideas and a preacher.” For him, this lack of continuity “creates some vagueness that encourages meditation and a mystic outlook” 13

(174). Johns, on the other hand, points to the oral nature of the text as the source of its apparently elliptic nature: “since the presentation is oral, the resonances and associations of the words, particularly for a non-literate audience, establish continuities not evident to a silent reader” (32).

Keeping in mind the oral nature of the quranic text has allowed scholars over the past few decades to come to greatly appreciate the literary merit of the Joseph surah.

Mustansir Mir praises it “for its sheer readability,” and says that it “is perhaps unsurpassed in the whole of the Qur’an” (1). He describes its narrative structure as an

“involution and evolution in reverse,” a sort of chiasmus (2). Johns adds that this creates

“a series of replays: incidents which occur a first time to result in evil, then a second time to result in good” (34). This structure makes it so that “the plot of the Joseph story is tightly-woven, there is a pattern to the events that make it up, and a strong dramatic element holds the reader’s interest” (Mir 5). It is precisely this dramatic quality that Johns praises most: “if the modern analogue for the Genesis version of the story is the novel, that for the Qur’anic, is drama: one might well describe it as a ‘play for voices’” (32).

Many of the themes in the Genesis account reappear in the Qur’an, although perhaps modified in some way. Mir identifies the principal theme as the “Inexorable

Fulfillment of Divine Purposes” (5), which can also be said of the biblical account. What follows is a brief summary of surah 12, highlighting contrasts with the Genesis version and the thematic consequences of those differences because “the points at which the

Koranic narrative and the biblical tradition are not compatible are very significant indicators” (Stern 199). 14

Surah 12, like most of the Qur’an, is presented in the form of a message from God delivered to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel, who promises that “We will tell you some of the best stories / that you did not know before” (v. 3).7 As in Genesis, the tale begins with Joseph’s dream, although this time the dream about the sheaves of grain is left out, probably out of narrative economy. An added detail is that Jacob warns Joseph not to tell his brothers about the dream for fear of their envy. Absent is Jacob’s own reprove of

Joseph for his perceived pretensions to grandeur. This is because, according to Mir, “The

Qur’an draws a sharp distinction between good and bad characters, the former (model) characters to be imitated, the latter (evil) characters whose example is to be shunned”

(10). Given the Muslim belief that prophets are sinless, both Jacob and Joseph are excised of any questionable behavior or attitudes.

To heighten the evil nature of the brothers, on the other hand, the Qur’an has them premeditate their treachery against Joseph. They first discuss killing him, which one brother opposes (none of the brothers are named in the Qur’an), and finally decide to put him in a well so that “perhaps some passing caravan will pick him up!” (v. 10). As part of their plan, they ask Jacob to allow Joseph to go with them (instead of Jacob sending

Joseph to check on them as in Genesis), and promise to protect him from wolves. Having carried out the plan, they return with his shirt stained in blood as evidence that Joseph has in fact been killed by wolves. In contrast with Genesis, Jacob does not believe their story.

This is perhaps because, as a prophet, he cannot be deceived.

7 Quranic citations, unless otherwise noted, come from Starkovsky. 15

As the brothers had hoped, a caravan does find Joseph in the well, and he is sold to an unnamed “man from Egypt” (v. 21). The narrator interjects that Joseph is in Egypt for the specific purpose that God can “teach him the interpretation of events,” or, in other words, make him a prophet (v. 21). The idea that such trials would help to prepare Joseph for this role is significant because, according to Bernstein, “the trials Joseph faced were .

. . viewed as antecedents for the struggles of the founder of Islam” (33).

The scenes in which Joseph’s master’s wife attempts to seduce him are handled quite differently in the Qur’an than in the Bible. While his refusal appears to be a flat one in Genesis, the angel Gabriel interjects in surah 12 that “he would have desired her, / had he not known the Commands of his Lord” (v. 24). Instead of leaving his garment in her hands, she tears it from behind as he is running to the door. There they run into the master. The mistress then accuses Joseph and asks that he be punished. While the

Potiphar of Genesis believes this accusation and imprisons Joseph at this point, in the

Qur’an Joseph is exonerated by a witness who points out that the garment is torn from behind, indicating that Joseph was fleeing. Some time passes, and the women of the city begin gossiping about the master’s wife’s infatuation with her servant. In order to justify herself, she holds a banquet for the ladies, at which she presents Joseph to them. They are so overwhelmed by his beauty that they cut their hands with their knives. The master’s wife repeats her desire for him, so Joseph prays “O my Lord! I prefer prison to what I’m urged to do” (v. 33). This version of the attempted seduction emphasizes Joseph’s beauty and God’s hand in sending him to prison. As Mir points out, “The story of Joseph is presented as a dramatic vindication of the thesis that God is dominant and His purposes 16

are inevitably fulfilled” (5). Since Joseph went to prison of his own volition, and not because of his seducer’s accusations, there is also a reflection of Johns’ idea that

“Another theme woven in the texture of the sura is the ineffectiveness of human trickery and deceit” (36).

The scene in which Joseph’s prison mates have and recount their dreams is somewhat truncated, and instead emphasizes Joseph’s role as a preacher. Before giving them the interpretation of their dreams, he tells them “I’ve left the creed of the people / who rejected God and denied the Hereafter, / and I’ve joined the creed of my forefathers /

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (v. 37). This appears to be a reflection of Muhammad’s own role as a prophet to restore the belief system of previous prophets. Bernstein notes “in

Islam, the quranic Joseph, along with Abraham and Moses, served as a model for

Muhammad, exemplifying for him the difficulties the Arabian prophet had to overcome in gaining acceptance for his mission” (2).

As an inversion of the events that led to Joseph’s imprisonment, Joseph receives apologies from the women of the city and from his master’s wife, and is made guardian of the stores of grain in Egypt. This reversal of fortunes continues logically into his meeting with his brothers, at which they do not recognize him, as in the biblical version.

This time he does not accuse them of espionage, but does require that they bring the youngest son next time in order to buy more grain. Jacob agrees to this much more willingly than in the Genesis account. When they arrive in Egypt again, Joseph reveals his identity to Benjamin, but not to the others. This makes Benjamin complicit in the trick in which Joseph hides his cup in Benjamin’s sack, leading to the youngest brother’s 17

arrest. The brothers confer and then make their appeal to Joseph on Benjamin’s behalf.

Joseph’s reply is: “Do you remember how you treated Joseph and his brother when you were astray?” (v. 89). The brothers answer, “ Is it possible that you’re Joseph?” (v. 90).

This revelation of identity lacks some of the dramatic tension of the biblical account, but is an anagnorisis nonetheless. It emphasizes the repentant attitude of the brothers, who upon proving that they can treat their youngest brother with kindness, are able to recognize what they could not before.

The Spanish retellings of the Joseph story are based not only on the biblical and quranic versions summarized above, but also on the rich exegetical traditions of the three monotheistic religions that make up Spain’s heritage. These theological metatexts serve to make the scriptural versions eternally relevant by elucidating obscure passages and emphasizing moral lessons, but, as Kugel, puts it, “The early exegete is an expositor with an axe to grind” (248). That is to say that exegesis is also colored by theological and ideological bias. In fact, Kugel says that the

common story of biblical interpretations and the assumptions that underlie

them are a subject of no small importance; perhaps even more than the

words of the Bible itself, they have helped to shape the very character of

Judaism and Christianity” (and, I would add, Islam). (1)

But exegesis’s role in defining religious identity does not prevent the cross-pollination of exegetical motifs, often imbued with new meanings, between different religious groups.

Kugel explains the need for exegesis in fourth-century B.C.E. Judaism, and this explanation applies as well to later religious communities: 18

These texts [the scriptures] exercised a central role in daily life, and were

discussed and commented upon in public assembly. It was thus natural

that determining their precise significance should become a major

concern. But often the sense of such texts was far from clear. Many of

them contained words whose meanings were no longer understood, or

references to people or places or customs no longer known. Moreover,

sometimes one passage in the Bible seemed to contradict another, and so

required some explanation if the contradiction was to be resolved.

Elsewhere it was simply a question of filling in the details. For many

biblical histories seemed here and there to lack a crucial detail: Why did X

do what he did? What was Y thinking at the time? And how does it all

relate to this or that fact told to us elsewhere? Faced with such questions,

ancient Jewish interpreters—scholars and ordinary folk, individuals or

groups—had to set out to provide explanations . . . (1-2)

This need for elucidation, however, does not justify mere flights of imagination or the incorporation of folkloric elements, but is instead deeply rooted in the scriptural texts:

The process of fully understanding a biblical text thus consisted of

bringing out all possible nuances implied in the precise wording of each

and every sentence. With regard to biblical narrative, this often meant

“deducing” background details, conversations, or even whole incidents

that were not openly stated in a narrative text, but only suggested by an

19

unusual word, an apparently unnecessary repetition, an unusual

grammatical form, and so forth. (Kugel 4)

With time, this textual interpretation becomes increasingly sophisticated (Kugel 259), and, in spite of its theological function, “is clever, inventive, quite down-to-earth, sometimes humorous, often moving, and always full of fresh insights with regard to the biblical text” (Kugel 2).

Such a creative effort, then, cannot be wholly objective. Instead, it serves as a means for promoting ideology and reaffirming group identity:

midrash . . . sought (and continues to seek) to make the foundation texts of

the respective communities perpetually relevant by engaging in a never-

ending dialectic with the scriptural tradition. By doing so, this process

thereby ensured unity of the community and continuity with the past.

(Bernstein 3)

Thus, those details and motifs that spring from the need to elucidate a text can also require elucidation or interpretation. Goldman, after citing a number of the motifs from the Joseph story, says, “These motifs may all be present in the ‘versions’ of Joseph, but with differing degrees of emphasis in each retelling” (xxii). Kugel adds that “an originally exegetical story can quickly lose its exegetical character, so that later tridents are even unaware of it and so introduce elements that obscure or confound its original purpose” (60). Bernstein notes, “Such nodes of strong re- or mis-reading of these source materials reflect the dialectic tensions involved in cross-cultural borrowing and the competition over cultural space and icons” (5). 20

The complex and intercultural process through which exegesis has passed over the centuries makes it practically impossible to identify any one detail as “belonging” to a particular religion, even if its origin may be pinpointed. Instead, I intend to provide brief glosses of some of the annotations of a particularly influential exegete selected from each religion. This will demonstrate the exegetical process and provide a basis for understanding the narrative expansions that I will examine in successive chapters. For

Judaism, I have selected the work of R’ Shlomoh ben Yitzchak, better known as Rashi, whose annotations are considered in Judaism to be essential to understanding the Torah,8 and whose commentaries were published in Spain in 1476 and 1487 (Herczeg xiii). For

Christianity, I have chosen the Glossa ordinaria, attributed to Bernard of Botone and frequently published in fifteenth-century Europe (Meehan). For Islam, I will look at the interpretations of Baidawi, who died in the late thirteenth century and whose commentary

“has enjoyed the greatest measure of popularity” among Muslims (Baidawi v). I have chosen these three commentators not only because of their influence and popularity within their respective faiths, but also because each cites or paraphrases his predecessors, making their works representative of the three religious traditions.9

Rashi’s notes reveal an effort to elucidate the ancient scriptural text for his Jewish contemporaries in medieval Europe. His approach is often philological, as he explains

8 According to Herczeg, “Virtually every student of Torah, from the child in elementary school to the gadol hador, no matter what area of Torah he studies, refers to Rashi” (xxi). 9 It is important to note, however, that these three commentaries are in no way exhaustive. Several of the literary versions examined in this study contain exegetical details not to be found in these three. Where pertinent, the sources of these details will be signaled. 21

words and grammatical features that had become obscure by his time. He incorporates midrashic and aggadic details wherever they can serve to clarify the language and fill any logical gaps in the Genesis account. The result of his efforts to make the text “make sense” is a uniquely Jewish reading of scripture.

In order to expand upon the Bible’s fairly terse description of Joseph’s youth

(37:2)10, for example, Rashi explains, “This implies that he would do things associated with youth; he would fix his hair, he would groom his eyes, so that he should look attractive.” The idea that Joseph was vain helps to build the case that he in some way deserved the misfortunes that were to befall him. This sense of “measure for measure” justice is part of Jewish theology (Lev. 24:17-21). For the same reason, in explaining the

Biblical mention of the “evil reports” concerning his brothers that Joseph brought his father, Rashi also portrays Joseph as a tattletale, whose misfortunes are a direct result of his accusations (37:2). Just as Joseph’s misfortunes must make sense within a Jewish worldview, so must the favoritism given to him by his father. Thus, Rashi gives specific reasons for it: his learning and his resemblance to him (37:3).11

Once Joseph is in Egypt, there are a number of logical gaps to be filled in the

Genesis text. For example, why does it say that bread is the only thing that Potiphar withholds from Joseph once the latter has become his steward? (39: 6). Rashi answers

10 In this section on Rashi, Biblical references will come from Herczeg because it contains his commentaries. I will cite Rashi’s commentaries by the verse that they refer to. Unless otherwise noted, all passages are in Genesis. 11 Rashi cites the Targum Onkelos’s interpretation of the phrase “a child of his old age” as “He was a wise son to him,” then adds that another possible understanding of the phrase is that it refers to the fact that “the splendor of [Joseph’s] appearance resembeld Jacob’s.” 22

from a philological perspective by explaining that “bread” is a euphemism for “wife.”

Why then is Potiphar’s wife attracted to the young slave? The explanation is that “Once

[Joseph] saw himself ruling, . . . he began to eat and drink and curl his hair. The Holy

One, blessed is He, said, ‘Your father is mourning, and you curl your hair? I will provoke the bear against you!” (Here “the bear” refers to Potiphar’s wife). Thus, even her lust for

Joseph can be explained as an element of divine justice. Rashi goes on to explain the reason that “not one of the men of the household was there in the house” on the day of the attempted seduction (39: 11): it was a festival day and everyone went to the temple except for Potiphar’s wife, who pretended to be sick. Although Joseph appears innocent in the biblical version: “he entered the house to do his work” (39: 11), Rashi explains that

“do his work” could refer to sexual intercourse, implying that Joseph had every intention of complying with his mistress’s wishes. In fact, the only thing that stops Joseph, according to the commentary, is the apparition of his father’s visage. This reading of the

Potiphar’s wife episode portrays Joseph as vulnerable to temptation, yet able to resist it.

In the exegetical desire to understand every aspect of the text, Rashi even specifies the butler and baker’s transgressions against Pharaoh (40:1): the butler served a drink with a fly in it, and the baker served bread with a pebble in it. A far more vexing issue is the identity or identities of Potiphar, Joseph’s master, and Poti-phera, Joseph’s father-in-law. The problem, as Kugel explains it, is that Potiphar is described as a saris, which “has the particular meaning in some (but not all!) biblical texts . . . of ‘eunuch,’ and this meaning carried through into later Hebrew” (75). This would seem to indicate that Potiphar cannot be the same as Poti-phera, who fathered Aseneth. Rashi, however, 23

has already explained that Potiphar’s wife’s attempted seduction had been motivated by an astrological prediction that she would “establish sons through [Joseph], but did not know if those sons were to be born from her or from her daughter” (39:1). The latter turned out to be the case. Thus, if Joseph is to marry Potiphar’s wife’s daughter, then

Potiphar must be the father of Asenath referred to as Poti-phera. Rashi is able to explain the eunuch issue: “[Poti-phera] is Potiphar, but he is called Poti-phera here because he became impotent by himself, because he desired Joseph for homosexual relations”

(41:45)12. Once again, there is a need to ensure that all the elements not only of the text, but also of the commentaries, fit together logically in order to demonstrate the logic with which God directs events.

Another textual anomaly in Genesis is that when Joseph accuses the brothers of spying in their first meeting, the brothers mention Joseph for no readily apparent reason

(42:13). Rashi explains that Jacob had commanded the brothers to enter through different gates in order to avoid the effects of the “evil eye.” This becomes Joseph’s justification for accusing them of espionage (42:12). The brothers then defend themselves by saying that they entered through separate gates in order to search for Joseph—the “one who is gone” (42:13). Joseph’s response in the Bible is enigmatic: “This is what I have been saying to you: ‘You are spies!’” (42:14). The commentary elucidates this in the following way:

12 Rabbi Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg, in his note to this commentary, clarifies this statement: “That is, he was not emasculated by human hands; God caused him to become impotent through natural causes.” 24

[Joseph] said to them, ‘Had you found him, and [his captors] had set for

you an exorbitant price, would you have ransomed him?’ They said to

him, ‘Yes.’ He said to them, ‘And if they were to say to you that they

would not give him back for any price, what would you do?’ They said to

him, ‘This is what we came for; to kill or to be killed.’ He said to them,

‘This is what I have been saying to you, you have come to kill the people

of the city. I divine with my goblet that two of you destroyed the great city

of Shechem.

Rashi’s expansion gives a context to Joseph’s reply and also enhances Joseph’s deception of his brothers by having him use his insider knowledge of them against them.

To answer the question of why Joseph chose Simeon in particular as a hostage when he sent the brothers back for Benjamin (42:24), Rashi gives two explanations: first, that Simeon was the one who threw Joseph into the well, and second, that he was trying to separate Simeon from Levi, since the two of them had previously killed the people of

Shechem. Lest the reader assume from this that Joseph was being purely vindictive,

Rashi clarifies that Joseph “imprisoned him only before their eyes, but once [the brothers] departed, [Joseph] brought [Simeon] out.”

Rashi adds details to the third meeting between Joseph and his brothers that cast

Jews in a positive light. For example, when Judah appeals to Joseph on behalf of

Benjamin, the Bible portrays this as a humble entreaty: “If you please, my lord, may your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears and may your anger not flare up at your servant”

(44:18). The exegete, however, turns into a menacing demand: “[Judah] spoke to 25

[Joseph] harshly,” and the implication of his words is “I will kill both you and your master.” Judah also asserts his own superiority over Benjamin in warfare and service in order to convince Joseph to take him in Benjamin’s place. Thus, Judah, the father of the

Jewish people, is recast as assertive and dominant in relation to a foreign power.

Rashi’s depiction of Joseph’s revelation of his true identity both to his brothers and his father exemplifies medieval Jewish concerns. Where in the biblical verse Joseph says “Come close to me, if you please,” (45:4), Rashi explains that it was to show them that he was circumcised. Just as circumcision differented Israelites from Egyptians, it also contrasted Jews from Christians in the middle ages. Then, when Joseph sends his brothers back to get Jacob, he tells them something they can say to him that no one else would know as proof that Joseph is alive: the last passage of the Torah that Jacob and Joseph had studied together before Joseph disappeared. Interestingly, the Torah did not exist during Joseph’s time. This anachronism again connects ancient Israel with medieval

Jewry.

The Catholic Glossa ordinaria also appropriates the Genesis text, this time through a Christian-centered reading. While Jewish exegesis strives to logically clarify and harmonize scriptural passages, the Glossa seeks to reconcile the Old Testament story to Christian theology, spiritualizing many elements of the story and emphasizing Joseph as a type of Christ. For example, Augustine says, “Joseph unus ex duodecim filiis Jacob, prae cæteris patri dilectus, Christum significavit, quem Deus Pater secundum carnem natum cæteris fratribus ex Abrahæ stirpe progenitis prætulit” (Migne 164, italics mine).

These kinds of parallelisms run throughout the commentary: when Jacob sends Joseph to 26

check on his brothers (Gen. 37:12-22), Isidore points out that God sent Christ to visit mankind (165). Jerome points out that just as Joseph saved Egypt, Christ saved the world:

“et Christus a fame verbi liberat mundum” (171). When Joseph gives his brothers grain

(Gen. 42:1-15), Isidore points out that in the same way Christ gave grace (171).

Even where the Church Fathers do not point out direct parallels between Joseph and Jesus, they use either the protagonist or other details to spiritualize the meaning of the account. For example, Jerome sees the seven years of plenty from Pharaoh’s dream as

“spiritualia dona” (170). He also sees the three hundred pieces of silver that Benjamin receives (Gen. 45:22-28) as symbolic of the Trinity (174). Augustine points out the

Christian virtues to be learned from Joseph’s example: “Unde in Joseph virtutem possumus considerare copiam” (172). And Isidore sees doctrinal mysteries in Joseph’s goblet: “intra saccum era scyphus, doctrina intra legem, lucerna intra modium” (173).

While both Jewish and Christian exegetes comment on basically the same scriptural text, Muslims use the quranic version as their point of departure. This version is shorter and somewhat more elliptical than the Genesis account, and seems to expect some background knowledge of the story. As Islam spread to peoples unfamiliar with biblical tales, it became necessary for Muslim scholars to explain certain details that come from the Hebrew Bible or Jewish Midrash (Bernstein 10). At the same time, this dependence produces an “anxiety of influence” that leads to an effort to differentiate from and compete with that tradition (Bernstein 9-10). For example, Baidawi recounts two different versions of the origin of the Surah 12, both of which emphasize a sense of competition between Islam and Judaism. In the first, he interprets the “lucidity” of the 27

story referred to in the first verse as that “which makes plain to the Jews that which they asked” (Baidawi 1). And what did they ask? “It is recorded that their learned men said to the chiefs of the polytheists, ‘Ask Muhammad why Jacob’s family moved from Syria to

Egypt, and about the story of Joseph’, whereupon this surah was revealed” (1).

Alternatively, he also offers this story

Jabir tells a story to the effect that a Jew came to the Prophet and said,

‘Tell me, Muhammad, about the stars which Joseph saw’. The Prophet

was silent, then Gabriel descended and gave him this information, so he

said, ‘If I tell you, will you become a Muslim?’ ‘Yes’, replied the Jew.

(Baidawi 3)

Both versions of the revelation of the Joseph story depict the Jews as cynical skeptics attempting to reveal Muhammad as a fraud, to which the Prophet is able to respond through revelation, thus giving Islam independence from Hebrew scripture. This tension between dependence on and competition with Hebrew scripture is apparent in many of

Baidawi’s annotations, along with the typically exegetical impulse to both clarify difficult passages and make scripture relevant.

For example, the Qur’an does not contain the names of any of Joseph’s brothers, nor of several other characters. Baidawi must therefore depend upon the Hebrew version for these names. In commenting on verse 9, where one of the brothers urges the others to kill Joseph, Baidawi comments that it was either Simeon or Dan (6). In the next verse, he identifies Josephs’ defender as “Judah, who was the best disposed of them to Joseph,” but then adds that “others say it was Reuben” (7). Interestingly, the Hebrew Bible is among 28

these “others”! (Gen. 37:21). Thus, at the same time that Baidawi depends on the Jewish scripture for important details, he also relegates that scripture to the same level as scriptural commentary.

On the other hand, Baidawi assigns names to other characters whose names do not appear in Genesis. The caravaner who finds Joseph in the well is identified as Malik b.

Dhu’r al-Khuza’i (11). The king of Egypt is named Rayyan Ibn al-Walid (12), and

Potiphar’s wife’s name is given as either Ra’il or Zulaikha (13). Potiphar’s name is arabicized as either Qitfir or Itfir (12).

Like the Christian exegetes, Baidawi spiritualizes and draws moral lessons from several passages. For example, he makes this commentary on the temptation that Joseph felt at Potiphar’s wife’s advances:

What is meant by Joseph’s desiring her is natural propensity and the

struggling of carnal feelings, not a rationally chosen purpose. Such

feelings do not fall within the sphere of moral responsibility. But the

person who truly deserves praise and the heavenly reward is the one who

restrains himself from acting when this sort of impulse arises or is about to

arise . . . . (Baidawi 15)

Thus, Joseph’s virtue is not defined by lack of temptation, but rather self-control.

Another moral issue that Baidawi addresses in his commentary is one that would have been particularly significant in Spanish history: correct behavior while living under non-Muslim jurisdiction. Referring to verse 55, where Joseph accepts political power from Pharaoh, Baidawi comments 29

The passage contains an indication that it is legitimate to seek appointment

to office, or announce one’s readiness to take it, and to accept appointment

at the hand of an unbeliever, if it be known that there is no way to

establish justice and control the populace except with the backing of the

unbeliever. Though there is a tradition going back to Mujahid that the king

accepted Islam through Joseph’s agency. (Baidawi 31)

Whether through political influence or proselyting, Baidawi’s commentary advocates an active role for Muslims wherever they are a minority.

Generally, however, Baidawi’s annotations clarify quranic language through philology and reference to exegetical traditions. He explains Jacob’s fear in verse 13 that

Joseph will be eaten by a wolf by saying that Jacob “had a dream in which the wolf seized on Joseph, and used to warn Joseph about it” (8). When Joseph is bought in Egypt

(v. 21), Baidawi cites some traditions that say that his price was “twenty dinars and two pairs of sandals and two white robes, [while] others [say] that it was his bulk in gold or alternatively in silver” (12-13). When Joseph resists Potiphar’s wife’s advances in verse

24, it is because

Some say that he saw Gabriel, others that a mental picture of his father

biting his fingers came before him, others a mental picture of Qitfir

[(Potiphar)], others that a voice cried to him, “Joseph, you are written

down among the prophets, and yet you are doing the deed of fools.” (15).

To answer the question of who the “witness of the house” (v. 26) was who spoke on

Joseph’s behalf when accused by Potiphar’s wife, Baidawi mentions that “Some say it 30

was her paternal cousin, others her maternal cousin, he being then a child in the cradle”

(16). In the scene where the ladies of the city cut their hands at Joseph’s beauty (v. 31),

Baidawi quotes Muhammad’s declarations about Joseph’s superlative beauty, and then notes that the ladies’ “excitement” could refer to spontaneous menstruation brought on by

“the violence of lust” (18-19). Pharaoh, on the other hand is more impressed by Joseph’s intellect, as Baidawi adds to verse 54 that Joseph conversed in 70 languages with him,

“so that the king was amazed at him and said, ‘I wish to hear my vision from you’” (30).

Several of the details that Baidawi adds to the meeting of Joseph and his brothers are similar to those of the Jewish tradition included by Rashi. In both Jacob warns the brothers to enter through separate gates to avoid the evil eye (35). Just as Rashi makes

Judah’s defense of Benjamin an aggressive and threatening one, Baidawi says the following about, in this case, Reuben’s argument:

It is related that they spoke to al-‘Aziz about freeing Benjamin and

Reuben said, “Oh king, by God you shall let us go, or I will raise a

clamour such as will cause pregnant women to give birth prematurely”,

and the hairs of his body stood on end and protruded through his clothes.

So Joseph said to his son, “Go up beside him and stroke him”; for

whenever one of the sons of Jacob was angry and another stroked him, his

anger would vanish. Then Reuben said, “Who is this? Surely there is in

this land one of the seed of Jacob.” (Baidawi 42)

31

Since Judah does not have the same significance for Muslims as he does for Jews, it is not surprising that this version would attribute this superhuman aggression to Reuben instead.

While in Rashi Joseph reveals his identity by showing his circumcision, Baidawi says the following:

It is said that they recognized him by his features and disposition when he

made this speech to them. According to others, he smiled, and they

recognized him by his teeth. Others say, he removed the diadem from his

head and they saw a mark on his temple resembling a white mole, and

Sarah and Jacob had had a similar one. (46)

Finally, just as Jacob recognizes that Joseph is alive by the passage that he had last studied with Joseph, in Baidawi’s annotations it is the scent of Joseph’s shirt, detected from 80 leagues away, that proves to Jacob the veracity of his sons’ report (47).

Each of these works of commentary serves to make the scriptural texts relevant to its respective religious community. The exegetical details that they compile provide source material for the Spanish literary adaptations of the Joseph story, which in turn manipulate those details in order to give them relevance to their respective audiences. In the following chapters, I analyze this process of manipulation, focusing particularly on the construction of group or national identity inscribed upon each version. Far from static, this process of identity construction through the retelling of the Joseph story shows a definite evolution over the centuries included in my study. In the context of medieval convivencia, the Josephine stories reflect the balance between acculturation and 32

boundary-maintaining mechanisms that is necessary for cultural survival. In the sixteenth century, the boundaries between Jews, Muslims, and Christians become complicated, and issues of national identity become more prominent as New Christians struggle for inclusion in the national scene. The Joseph plays from that century reflect these issues.

Finally, the Baroque’s tendency towards artistic self-reflection influences the Josephine adaptations from that period. The metatheatricality in these versions serves to interrogate the very process of identity construction.

In the first chapter, I examine three medieval prose adaptations of the story. The first is a portion of Alfonso el Sabio’s General estoria, in which exegetical materials from

Christian, Muslim, and Jewish sources are combined with classical sources and subordinated to a Hispano-Christian perspective. I argue that this manipulation of details contributes to the construction of a proto-nationalist identity and supports Alfonso’s imperialist ambitions. The second is the Jewish Sefer ha-Yasar, which presents itself as a lost book of the Bible and depicts the Israelites as strong and warlike in contrast with the

Christians’ weak and petty Edomite ancestors. This undermines the incipient Christian hegemony in the peninsula and promotes a more aggressive version of Jewish identity.

The third is the Muslim Leyenda de José, which compiles a variety of Muslim exegetical details to the detriment of narrative logic. This represents a form of cultural resistance to assimilation.

The second chapter is a comparison of two medieval poetic versions of the Joseph story, both of which appropriate the Christian poetic form of the cuaderna vía and adapt it to other concerns. The first is the Jewish Coplas de Yosef, which formed part of the 33

carnivalesque Purim celebration. The poem reflects the festivities, and the combined effect is a Bakhtinian sense of liberation from the confines of religious identity and its resultant persecution. The other is the Muslim Poema de José, which instead celebrates suffering as a defining characteristic of the faithful.

After exploring these dynamics in the multicultural middle ages, I move in the third chapter to the period immediately following the expulsions of Jews and Muslims from the peninsula. In the Joseph stories from the sixteenth century the effort is not to define one group against another, but rather to expand the definition of national identity to include both Old and New Christians. Micael de Carvajal does this in his Tragedia

Josephina by emphasizing the Eucharist and its unifying power, and by criticizing Old

Christian anti-intellectualism. The anonymous Los desposorios de José also emphasizes the Eucharist, but, in addition, depicts the marriage of Joseph and Aseneth as symbolic of the union between Old and New Christians. Lope de Vega is the culminating figure in this New Christian tendency towards social criticism, but he secularizes the perspective and mostly avoids the controversy of the converso problem.

The Baroque’s metatheatricality brought about an interrogation of the issues of identity construction that were apparent in earlier versions of the Joseph story. Antonio

Mira de Amescua’s metatheatricality in El más feliz cautiverio can be characterized as anthropocentric. It interrogates the process of scriptural exegesis and, by extension, identity formation. Calderónian metatheater in Sueños hay que verdad son, on the other hand, serves the didactic purpose of teaching dogma and portraying an orthodox Catholic identity as the only legitimate identity. Sor Juana, in her El cetro de José, metatheatrically 34

allegorizes the exegetical process in order to reveal its constructedness and assert her right as a criolla intellectual to participate in it.

The Joseph story has been appropriated in each of these periods and adapted to reflect the identity issues of each individual culture and epoch. Given the contemporary scholarly interest in these concerns, I believe that the Josephine tradition merits greater critical attention than it has previously received.

35

Chapter 1: Boundary Maintenance in Medieval Prose Versions

Pre-modern Spain was characterized by the political and cultural interaction of the three monotheistic religions discussed in the introduction. In asserting this, I am entering into a rather fierce historical debate centering on the work of Spanish historian/philologist

Américo Castro. Although the space and scope of this study do not allow for a complete review and analysis of the polemics concerning the nature of cultural interaction in medieval Spain, I will explain a few key concepts that are relevant to my analysis of the versions of the Joseph studied in the next two chapters.

Castro’s monumental historical works have become seminal because of his pioneering efforts to view Spanish culture as a product of convivencia, which is his term for the “living togetherness” of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in medieval Spain.13

Although scholars led by Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz denied the importance of convivencia in the development of the Spanish national character, the term has become common currency in the field.14 The real debate has been over the precise nature of this intercultural interaction. David Nirenbeg has identified two camps: the “rose-tinted” view of convivencia as an idyllic and tolerant setting, and the “lachrimose” view that sees

Semitic minorities as victims (8). He then rejects both for their failure to take into account the full complexity of ethnic relations, while at the same time adopting certain elements from each point of view (8-9). His argument is that “violence was a central and

13 I get the translation of convivencia as “living togetherness” from The Spaniards 584. 14 For a more complete analysis of the debate between Castro and Claudio Sánchez- Albornoz, see Glick, Islamic 6-13, 165-166. 36

systemic aspect of the coexistence of majority and minorities in medieval Spain,” and suggests that “coexistence was in part predicated on such violence” (9).

There is nothing truly groundbreaking about the idea that convivencia involved both coexistence and conflict because, in fact, Castro himself says that “each one of the three peoples” were “desirous of affirming themselves as a people with—and against— the other two” (52). Even María Rosa Menocal, whose work focuses mainly on the

“culture of tolerance,” largely acknowledges this seeming paradox observed by

Nirenberg:

In its moments of great achievement, medieval culture positively thrived

on holding at least two, and often many more, contrary ideas at the same

time. This was the chapter of Europe’s culture when Jews, Christians, and

Muslims lived side by side and, despite their intractable differences and

enduring hostilities, nourished a complex culture of tolerance . . .” (11)

This thought also echoes Thomas F. Glick’s 1992 essay, in which he explains the term convivencia: “The word . . . is loosely defined as ‘coexistence,’ but carries connotations of mutual interpenetration and creative influence, even as it also embraces the phenomena of mutual friction, rivalry, and suspicion” (1). I agree with these scholars that medieval convivencia was characterized by a combination of tolerance and violence, and that both of these elements contribute to the cultural achievement exemplified in the versions of the Joseph story that come from that context.

Glick’s above cited essay also refers obliquely to a concept that, writing in 1969, he and Oriol Pi-Sunyer discuss in greater detail: that of acculturation and its relationship 37

to convivencia. They point out some the limitations of the latter term as it is commonly employed:

Convivencia embraces the most diverse phenomena without distinction

(formal and non-formal contacts, response to stimuli, idea diffusion and

reinvention, etc.) and fails to account for such decisive concepts as

selectivity, cultural rigidity, boundary-maintaining mechanisms, cultural

crystallization and disintegration, and demographic and ecological factors.

(147)

They propose in order to remedy these limitations that historians adopt the anthropological concept of acculturation in order to study the specific dynamics of cultural exchange among Christians, Muslims, and Jews. They explain that “[t]he modern theory of acculturation aims at providing a dynamic model applicable to all culture change resulting from external influences” (139). The benefit of this theory is that it takes into account fluctuating political and social contexts:

[A]cculturation affects all societies and is thus essentially a bilateral

process. This does not mean that influences will be felt in equal measure

by all participant entities. The expectation, in fact, is that due to such

variables as the intensity of boundary-maintaining mechanisms, not to

mention such factors as power and prestige, differential rates of change

will be the rule rather than the exception. (Glick and Pi-Sunyer 140)

38

To demonstrate this variability, they also give a very useful division of medieval Spanish history that demonstrates how the dynamics of acculturation differ during different time periods. They use the following four divisions:

1. 711-1050: A period of “Islamic ascendancy” in which “the acculturation of the

indigenous population was sharply structured, the rules for conversion or for

coexistence with ‘People of the Book’ . . . being prescribed by Islamic Law”

(142).

2. 1030-1250: A period of “cultural equilibrium and flexibility, reflecting the

increase of Christian strength—and decrease of Islamic—to the point where the

opposing forces were more nearly equal” (143). Although marked by almost

constant warfare, there was a “free passage of cultural influence in both directions

and a general prevalence of tolerance . . .” (143).

3. 1232-1492: A period of “Christian ascendancy” in which “Christian rigidity

increased throughout the period, with mounting pressure towards assimilation as

the Islamic enclaves grew weightier” (143).

4. 1492-1609: A post-expulsion period that “was characterized by extreme Christian

rigidity and intolerance . . . all in the service of a general thrust towards political

and cultural homogeneity” (143). In terms of acculturation, “pressure towards the

assimilation of Muslims and the obliteration of Islamic culture was increased”

(143).

39

While I do not reject the usefulness of the term convivencia as a shorthand for the sometimes tolerant, sometimes violent coexistence of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in medieval Iberia, the concept of acculturation and ideas associated with it will provide the tools for my analysis. In addition to the historical framework outlined above, there are two terms that will be of importance here. The first is that of assimilation.

“Acculturation” and “assimilation” are not synonymous terms, although the latter is related to the former. Raymond H. C. Teske, Jr. and Bardin H. Nelson explain that acculturation is a bidirectional cultural exchange that does not require a change in values or self-identification. Assimilation, on the other hand, is a one-way process in which one culture entirely replaces another. It requires a change in values and identity (365). Thus,

Spanish medieval convivencia is more characterized by acculturation during times of relative tolerance, and by a push towards assimilation during times of one culture’s ascendancy or dominance over the others.15

Another key concept is that of “boundary-maintaining mechanisms.” These are a defense against assimilation and a means for filtering the interchange that is a part of acculturation. Glick and Pi-Sunyer describe them as “such phenomena as language, religious beliefs, ideologies, the cultivation of ethnocentric mechanisms such as nationalism, and the institutions of warfare” (139-140). In other words, they are strategies for actively defining group identity against the Other.

15 See also Glick, Islamic 165-166, where he distinguishes the cultural process of acculturation from the social process of assimilation. 40

In this chapter, then, I will analyze three prose versions of the Joseph story. The first is Alfonso el Sabio’s General estoria, which dates to the early part of third period from the above list. This work still reflects much of the cultural interchange from the second period, but it is obvious that this interchange can only occur within the rigid guidelines set forth by the ascendant Christian power. The second is the anonymous

Jewish Sefer ha-Yasar, which although difficult to date, demonstrates several boundary- maintaining mechanisms as a form of resistance to the Christian rigidity communicated in the General estoria. Finally, the anonymous Muslim Leyenda de José pertains to the fourth period. Although temporally separated from the other two works, its comparison with them is justified for two reasons. On the one hand, its style is more medieval than early modern. For example, according to Antonio Vespertino Rodríguez, the Leyenda

“perpetúa desde sus comienzos hasta bien entrado el siglo XVII temas, motivos y formas enraízados en el estilo medieval” (97). On the other hand, the Christian rigidity of the fourth period is an extreme form of that which was incipient during the reign of Alfonso.

The Leyenda therefore demonstrates more extreme forms of boundary-maintaining mechanisms as a response to a more extreme degree of Christian hegemony.

Alfonso X El Sabio’s General estoria: Reconciliation and Protonational Identity

Alfonso X El Sabio’s General estoria contains a lengthy and intriguing version of the Joseph story as part of its retelling of Genesis. In it, the Learned King’s school of translators and compilers create a new Spanish protonational identity that embraces a form of cultural hybridity that is viewed as united under and subjected to Alfonso’s 41

imperialistic authority. In order to analyze the specific processes of this identity formation, I will first briefly discuss Alfonso’s political ideology, the process by which his literary-historical works were created, and the important connection between these two aspects of his reign. I will then analyze the different manifestations of reconciliation and hybridity in the Joseph chapters of the General estoria in order to reveal the

Alphonsine vision of Spanish identity.

Alfonso X ruled the kingdoms of Castile and Leon from 1252-1284. His reign was both progressive in its effort to abandon feudalism and reactionary in its nostalgia for

Roman and Hispanic imperial traditions. His biographer, Joseph O’Callaghan, notes,

“Under the influence of Aristotle and Roman law, thirteenth-century political theory moved beyond the idea of society based on the feudal bonds between lord and vassal to a new idea of corporate unity linking all men in a given territory under the rule of a king”

(17). For Alfonso, it was this new idea of kingship that motivated his aggressive military and diplomatic projects: “his aspiration to ascendancy in Spain, his projected African crusade, and his quest for the [Holy Roman] imperial title were all linked together”

(O’Callaghan 198). Robert I. Burns points out that “Alfonso was not a popular king. His attempts to act as a proper sovereign rather than a feudal suzerain alienated the nobility”

(3). Thus, many of Alfonso’s imperialistic political aspirations ultimately failed.

One area in which Alfonso achieved great success, however, was as a patron of art and learning. Modern scholars have dubbed him the “Emperor of Culture” (Burns).

O’Callaghan calls the result of Alfonso’s cultural labors a “Castilian renaissance” (270).

Of particular interest to this study is his patronage of, and participation in, the translation 42

and compilation of histories, an activity to which he dedicated increased interest after

1269, the year that he abandoned several political projects and turned his attention to scholarly activity (Gormly 28). The first modern editor of the General estoria, A.

Solalinde, describes the extent of the king’s participation in this process:

[S]abemos que Alfonso determinaba, entre los varios existentes, el relato o

la opinión dignos de seguirse; que indicaba la forma de redacción, y que

designaba quién debía ser el redactor de la parte discutida. No se

contentaba el rey con intervenir en esta labor preparatoria, sino que

después de redactada o traducida una obra, eliminaba de ella lo superfluo

y añadía cuanto creía necesario, corrigiendo finalmente el lenguaje. (qtd.

in Gormly 28)16

Given this active regal intervention and supervision, it is perfectly reasonable to read the historical works produced by the Alphonsine schools as reflective of the king’s own intentions and ideology.

The General estoria is perhaps the most ambitious of Alfonso’s historical works.

Sister Francis Gormly classifies the work as a biblia historial because of its strict adherence to biblical chronology (30). The Bible is not, however, the General estoria’s only source. Manuel Álvar points out that

La Biblia ha condicionado el quehacer y ha dado la armadura a la obra,

pero Alfonso trata de crear una historia universal, no sólo eclesiástica, y

16 Alfonso’s intervention in his work is a topic much discussed by twentieth-century scholars. See, for example, Gonzalo Menéndez Pidal 373-376 and Cárdenas 93. 43

busca en autores del pasado y en comentaristas recientes la manera de dar

sentido a lo que se presenta como un caos informe. (38)

After an analysis of other universal histories of the time, Francisco Rico concludes that the General estoria “es lo que por historia universal . . . se entendía en el siglo XIII” (64).

Thus, more than a translation of the Bible, the General estoria is conceived as a history of everything, “el libro que quiso ser todos los libros” (Alfonso xxxv). The work’s prologue describes its view of history and methodology for compiling it:

[T]rabajáronse los sabios omnes de meter en escrito los fechos que son

passados pora aver remembrança d’ellos como si estonces fuessen e que

los sopiessen los que avién de venir assí como ellos. E fizieron d’esto

muchos libros que son llamados estorias e gestas en que contaron de los

fechos de Dios e de los profetas e de los santos, e otrossí de los reyes, e de

los altos omnes e de las cavallerías e de los pueblos. E dixieron la verdat

de todas las cosas, e non quisieron nada encobrir tan bien de los que

fueron buenos como de los que fueron malos. (5)

This passage does not refer to the Bible as the ultimate source of authority, but rather “los sabios omnes” who labored to write down both sacred and secular history. Alfonso’s team proceeds under the assumption that both types of history can serve a didactic purpose: “E esto fizieron porque de los fechos de los buenos tomassen los omnes exemplo pora fazer bien e de los fechos de los malos que recibiessen castigo por se saber

44

guardar de lo non fazer” (5).17 Pedro Sánchez-Prieto Borja points out, “Si hemos de creer los prólogos alfonsíes, la historia se concibe como un gran repertorio ético, de donde tomar ejemplos de conducta” (Alfonso xxxiv).

That is not to say, however, that all “sabios” tell the truth and that history is purely didactic. The prologue continues: “Onde por todas estas cosas, yo don Alfonso . . . después que ove fecho ayuntar muchos escritos e muchas estorias de los fechos antiguos escogí d’ellos los mas verdaderos e los mejores que ý sope e fiz ende fazer este libro” (5-

6, italics mine). Thus, there is indeed a scale of relative quality among sources that requires an inevitably subjective selection process. Nancy Joe Dyer says of Alphonsine historiography: “‘Facts’ are really story elements which can be suppressed, subordinated, highlighted, and manipulated as one would the elements of a novel or a play” (143).

Francisco Javier Díez de Revenga also argues for the literary nature of Alphonsine historiography, saying that “sólo teniendo en cuenta esta condición y la de su autor como un autor literario entenderemos el verdadero sentido y la auténtica intención de la obra alfonsí” (167). There is nothing new, however, about reading an ostensibly historical work as literature: in his seminal article, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” published in 1974, Hayden White points out the need to

consider historical narratives as what they most manifestly are: that is to

say verbal fictions, the contents of which are as much invented as found

17 The Arcipreste of Hita later echoes this idea: “Provar omne las cosas non es por ende peor, / e saber bien e mal e usar lo mejor” (LBA stanza 76) 45

and the forms of which have more in common with their counterparts in

literature than they have with those in the sciences. (278)

My argument, then, is that the selection and handling of sources in the General estoria reveals Alfonso’s political ideology. A number of scholars have discussed the connection between the Learned King’s political and cultural activities. O’Callaghan sees

Alfonso’s scholarly pursuits as a way to “give new form and shape to Castilian society”

(270). Álvar points out that Alfonso’s task “no es sólo el de la curiosidad o del saber por el saber, sino que está respondiendo a esa pregunta de ‘¿para qué?’ . . . Un para qué con sentido religioso, científico, político y nacional” (75-76). Anthony J. Cárdenas studies the inextricable ideological connection between Alfonso’s chancery, from which he administered the kingdom, and his scriptorium, where his histories were produced. His investigation reveals “a very practical motivation for [Alfonso’s] cultural endeavors, a bonding of translatio studii with the translatio potestatis” (108). In other words, Alfonso’s scholarly pursuits are a “cultural journey toward empire” (Cárdenas 91). Dyer draws similar conclusions from her study of Alfonso’s historiography, noting that

The Learned Monarch sought to bring meaning to historical events by

artistic and scientific approaches, emplotting events into an effective

narrative and explaining their causal relationships. His emplotment of

history was as decisive a social and political stratagem as any legal or

political move of his career. (144)18

18 White defines “emplotment” as: “the encodation of the facts contained in the chronicle as components of specific kinds of plot-structures” (280). 46

Finally, Burns specifies Alfonso’s didactic goal “to bring Castile itself into the mainstream of high civilization and to set afoot a process that would produce a united, educated, artistic, and religious people” (5-6). More important to my own analysis, Burns views this didacticism as “reinforcing a protonational identity” and contributing to “the self-definition of Alfonso’s enlarged Castile” (8).

I will now analyze the Joseph chapters in the General estoria to show how the

Alphonsine compilers make use of this biblical story to create a protonational identity.

This occurs through a blend of well-orchestrated reconciliations that reflect Joseph’s own reconciliatory nature. Alfonso’s scholars reconcile Spain’s history to universal history, pagan history to orthodox history, patrology to scripture, and Old Testament figures to

New Testament Christian typology. They also resolve the contradictions among “sabios,” and between Christian and Muslim versions of the Joseph tale. These various reconciliations are constantly subjected to Alfonso’s own vision of Spanish identity, so a close examination of their handling reveals a burgeoning hegemonic discourse.

The first of these reconciliations or syntheses is the insertion of Spanish history into universal history, and vice versa. One very obvious example of this in the Joseph chapters is the description of the Egyptian pharaoh’s wars of conquest prior to Joseph’s arrival in Egypt. After defeating neighboring kingdoms, the pharaoh, named “Nicrao,” leaves on an expedition to conquer western lands. Tunisia, Carthage, and other unspecified kingdoms surrender without a fight and become his vassals (Alfonso 411).

The story continues:

47

E esto firmado passó a tierras de Provencia. Desí vino a España, que era

estonces en poder del rey Rodrigo el menor, e lidió con él, e mató muchos

de su compaña el rey Nicrao. E el rey Rodrigo con sus pueblos pleitearon

con él quel diessen cada año oro sabido por cada cabeça de omne. E esto

fecho e firmado tornós Nicrao contra orient . . . . (412)

Spain, normally absent from history before the time of the Roman Empire, is portrayed here as prominent in ancient Egyptian history.19

This particular moment does not appear to be a very flattering one for Spain, but later the account subtly portrays Spain as the heir to Egypt’s imperialist legacy.

Describing the geography of Egypt, it states: “e es Memfis por la cibdad e por el regno, como dezimos en España León por tod el regno e León por la cibdad” (432). Although apparently simply a means for explaining ancient geography, this parallelism strengthens

Spain’s position as the newest recipient of the translatio imperii that had previously passed from Egypt to Greece, then from Greece to Rome.20 Indeed, the specific use of

León as an example is significant, since it is the Leonese imperial tradition that justified

19 Interestingly, this mention of Spain seems to contradict a later mention in the Joseph chapters, which says that Jupiter was a king “en Creta e en la mayor partida de Grecia e de España” (421). Both serve the purpose of inserting Spain into universal history. 20 That the Alphonsine scholars were well acquainted with the concept of translatio is evident towards the end of the Joseph chapters: “[D]ize el maestre Godofré que Grecia por el su saber vencié a las otras tierras, e compusiera las leis, e enseñara dar derechos juizios, e fallara los saberes ella primero por sí, salvo ende el poco comienço que los griegos ovieron de Egipto, e después los ovieron los romanos e d’allí e d’allá a las otras yentes” (512). 48

Alfonso’s claim to preeminence among monarchs in the peninsula.21 Read in this context, the description of Nicrao’s relations with neighboring kingdoms sounds like what

Alfonso would have like to have achieved in Iberia: “Cuando los reyes sus vezinos e los otros sopieron las nuevas d’este rey los unos se vinieron meter en su poder, los otros se desviavan d’el cuanto pudién, refuyendo por non aver con él contienda” (411). Thus,

Spain is not only inserted into universal history, but the ancient world is also read through the lens of contemporary Spanish politics. As Álvar says,

[Alfonso n]o inventa, sino que aprende, pero, dueño ya del saber, lo

ahorma a lo que es su tiempo, su lengua y su pueblo. De este modo, la

historia universal resulta enraizada en la visión que desde Castilla ha

configurado el rey. (39)

Given the hereditary relationship that the General estoria establishes between ancient and contemporary imperialist projects, it is not surprising that the work also pays close attention to Joseph’s qualities as a loyal administrator to the king. It would not have seemed out of the ordinary in thirteenth-century Spain for a king to place Jews into positions of power. O’Callaghan describes one such position:

A major responsibility pertained to the almojarife who supervised the

collection of royal revenues and the payment of stipends to nobles and

others. An expert in money matters, he was expected to be able to increase

21 According to O’Callaghan: “[Alfonso] hoped to lord it over his neighbors in the peninsula by reviving old Leonese imperial pretensions” (5). 49

the king’s income . . . . The post was often filled by Jews such as Mair,

whose sons Zag and Yusuf served as tax farmers. (39-40)

Joseph, before receiving his appointment as “aguazil,” must prove his effectiveness by building a villa for Nicrao’s daughter, which he accomplishes admirably and in record time (429). Like Mair in Alfonso’s reign, Joseph is a tax collector (484). He is also a close advisor to whom Nicrao and his successors owe their success as monarchs:

E todos estos faraones que regnaron en Egipto de cuando Josep fue ý

poderoso fasta aquel tiempo todos fueron buenos e mantovieron sus

pueblos en justicia e en paz por los buenos e sanos consejos que les dava

Josep, que fue poderoso con todos e por quien se ellos guiavan. (517)

The compiler, in a rare moment of explicit intervention, indulges the temptation to editorialize on the importance of royal advisors: “Ca los reis, maguer que son bravos por sí, peró mejores son en sí, si non por los malos consejeros” (518). This statement touches on an important issue for Alfonso, in whose legal works the chief advisor to the king, the alférez, is described as someone who “as the king’s advocate, . . . demanded recompense for those who diminished the king’s dominion in any way” (O’Callaghan 38-39). Thus, by interweaving ancient and contemporary politics, the General estoria places Spain into a position of prominence in world history. This discourse of power constructs a Spanish protonational identity as an empire in the tradition of ancient Egypt.

Another reconciliation in the work is that of pagan history to the version of history accepted by Catholic orthodoxy. The two versions of history are never on equal terms, however, so the process of reconciliation also establishes a sort of cultural 50

imperialism in which Spanish culture may benefit from the knowledge of the classics while conforming that knowledge to orthodox thinking. Francisco Rico comments that, in the General estoria, “Toda la historia antigua . . . es una suerte de <

Jesucristo>>” (69). In other words, pagan wisdom is not treated as such, but rather as an unknowing witness to Christian faith. This justifies and makes orthodox Spain’s self- identification as heir to such pagan civilizations as Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

The combination of biblical and classical history occurs throughout the General estoria. Typically, the chronicle follows the Bible with interpolated chapters on contemporary extra-biblical people and events. For example, the work introduces one such digression into pagan history: “E avié [Josep] en essa sazón diziséis años que naciera. E regnavan estonces el rey Baleo en Assiria, e Mesapo en Sicionia, e Foroneo en

Argos, e Júpiter en Creta e en Europa, e los faraones pastores en Egipto” (402). The ensuing chapter then describes king Jupiter and his family, significantly, as real people, and not as gods. The purpose is to show how the pagans distorted history and turned real life figures into deities. Here is a description of how this occurred with Venus:

E porque la costilación de la planeta que á este nombre Venus avié

estonces mayor fuerça que otra estrella allí ó esta dueña nació llamaron a

ella otrossí por aquel nombre d’aquella planeta . . . . Esta dueña era muy

enseñada e mucho apuesta, e fue muy fermosa, de guisa que vencié d’esto

a todas las mugieres del su tiempo. E llamáronla por ende los gentiles

deessa de fermosura . . . . (403)

51

This description deconstructs classical history: instead of the planet being named for

Venus, Venus is named for the planet. Instead of being the goddess of beauty, she is a human being only superior to those “del su tiempo.” She is real, but her status as a goddess is only legend.

Even where “gentile” history is accepted, it is not viewed as entirely reliable until some Christian meaning is found in it. For example, after describing Prometheus’s ascent into the sky to light his torches with the sun’s rays, the compilers qualify this description in the following way:

Mas porque esto non semeje fabliella a los buenos e entendudos departen

sobr’ello Eusebio e Jerónimo e los otros sabios que dend fablan, e dizen

que esta razón quiere seer que tanto era este Prometeo sabio e enseñava

bien los saberes a los omnes que de los necios e sin todo saber, que eran

fascas como muertos o bestias en los entendimientos, fazié sabios e

enseñados tanto que los sacava de la muerte de la neciedad e los tornava a

vida de saber, e por esta semejança e espanamiento sale de fabliella esta

razón. (517)

Thus, the inclusion of classical history in a universal history is justified by the interpretations of well-respected Church Fathers, who reduce it to a metaphor of intellectual enlightenment. Álvar comments on this phenomenon, declaring: “Tal es la postura de Alfonso el Sabio: continuador de unos saberes profanos que están amparados por la doctrina de la fe” (37-38). The reading of pagan mythology in the light of Christian orthodoxy reflects Alfonso’s vision of Spanish identity as the culmination of the process 52

of translatio imperii, through which the power and learning of the ancients is combined with and subjugated to Christianity.

The General estoria cites preeminent Christian theologians not only to justify the inclusion of classical legends, but also to serve the exegetical purpose of clarifying the biblical text. In the introduction to Jacob’s deathbed prophecies concerning each of his sons, the compilers interject: “E otrossí porque serién d’otra guisa escuras de entender ir las emos departiendo como las fallamos departidas por los escritos de los sabios e santos padres que fablaron sobr’esta estoria” (491). The structure of the work in general follows this pattern of narrative combined with explanation by Church Fathers. Gormly finds that the ratio of biblical to extra-biblical material in the General estoria’s retelling of Genesis is three to one (39). This reliance on exegetes can be seen in the opening paragraph of its first chapter of the Joseph story, which begins with “Cuenta Moisén en la estoria de la

Biblia . . .” but then in rapid succession cites Godfrey (“E maestre Godofré diz . . .”),

Peter Comestor (“E diz maestre Pedro . . .”) and Josephus (“assí como diz Josefo”) (399).

The treatment of these “sabios” is, however, contradictory at times. On the one hand, “los otros sabios” appear to be accorded nearly the same status as the Bible, as in

“segund que lo fallamos que lo cuenta en la Biblia e lo leemos en los libros de los otros sabios” (408). This high status makes it necessary to explain and reconcile any contradictions amongst them. For example, when the sources differ as to the name of the land that Pharaoh granted to the Israelites, the compilers explain: “e esto semeja desacuerdo entre los que fablaron d’esta estoria.” (471). The text goes on to cite Peter

Comestor’s explanation that the Egyptians changed the name of the land from “Jersón” to 53

“Ramesse” when they enslaved the Israelites, “E d’esta guisa son aquellos logares todos una tierra, e por ende maguer que lo semeje non desacuerdan los sabios e los santos padres en esta razón” (471). If, however, such a reconciliation of sources is not possible, as is the case in the discussion of the number of Jacob’s family at the time that they entered Egypt, the Bible apparently becomes the ultimate authority: “Mas tenemos que este departimiento non tiene mengua, e por ende non dezimos d’él aquí más, ca nos cumple en dezir lo que en el testo e en la letra dixo de la Biblia Moisén sobre qui lo an todos” (470). Even though ostensibly the Bible is being accorded preeminence over the exegetes, it is important to take notice of the opening phrase “Mas tenemos que,” an expression of judgment. It is a reminder that Alfonso and his team assume ultimate narrative authority because they are the ones who manipulate the sources included in the work. This assertion of editorial authority is a reflection of Alfonso’s assertion of ultimate authority in his kingdom. O’Callaghan says, “By professing to be God’s vicar in temporal affairs in his own kingdom, [Alfonso] affirmed his direct dependence on God for his authority, without any intermediary such as the pope or the emperor” (23). The sense of independence from and authority over the churchmen and their writings is a necessary step in the establishment of a uniquely Spanish, protonational identity.

Any construction of Spanish identity in the thirteenth century must include more than just classical, biblical, and patrological elements: it must also take into account the three cultures that coexisted in the Iberian Peninsula. As discussed above, Alfonso’s reign is part of Glick and Pi-Sunyer’s third period, characterized by Christian ascendancy and its accompanying cultural rigidity, yet is still profoundly influenced by the relative 54

tolerance of the second period. Alfonso’s relationship with Jews and Muslims certainly reflects this ambiguity: on the one hand his own law codes treated them as inferior: “Jews and Muslims were dealt with in the same section of the Partidas as others whose behavior was regarded as aberrant by the dominant Christian society” (O’Callaghan 99). These

Partidas banned Jews from having Christian servants, prevented new synagogues from being build, and decreed the death penalty for Jewish or Moorish men who had sex with

Christian women, and otherwise segregated Jews and Moors from Christians (“Siete partidas” 269-75). Yet, as O’Callaghan points out, “[m]ore than likely there was always some disparity between the strictures of the law and the reality of daily life” (99). In fact,

Jews were active participants in Alfonso’s workshops and, as mentioned above, held posts in his government (O’Callaghan 39-40, 134). In a similar manner, although Alfonso fought numerous military campaigns against Muslims in the peninsula and planned an

African invasion, his Muslim vassals were likely invited to his meetings of the cortes

(O’Callaghan 167). A similar ambiguity is to be found in the General estoria.

McGaha notes the paucity of Jewish commentaries in the Joseph chapters of the

General estoria (Coat 332). Indeed, the only Jew cited with any frequency is Josephus, who had become estranged from the Jewish community of his time.22 The main Jewish source in the work is of course the Hebrew Bible, which, as mentioned, provides its structure and most of its material. The interpretation of the Old Testament, revered as

22 The Encyclopaedia Judaica states: “Although generally a favorite among the members of the courts of Vespasian and Titus during their lifetime, Josephus' position vis-à-vis the Jews was wretched in the extreme. Both in and outside Rome, they despised and hated him for his past and tried to harm him at every turn” (Schalit 436). 55

scripture by both Jews and Christians, is the subject of heated debate between the two religions. In his discussion of the treatment of Jews in the Auto de los reyes magos,

Dwayne E. Carpenter says,

The response of the two rabbis accords with medieval portrayals of Jews

concerning the messiah: the first claims ignorance of Old Testament

prophecies, while the second implies that the Jews have intentionally

concealed knowledge of such predictions. (70)

In other words, Christians viewed Jewish exegesis as falling into either of two categories: ignorance or deliberate concealment of messianic typology. The General estoria’s reconciliation of the Old and New Testaments, particularly focused on the figure of

Joseph as a prefiguration of Christ, is a tacit participation in the debate between

Christianity and Judaism. Thus, even though the story depicts a Jewish hero, it’s retelling is a reaffirmation of the ideological enmity between the two religions. This is in keeping with D. Carpenter’s characterization of the difference between Christian-Muslim and

Christian-Jewish rivalries and their depictions:

For nearly seven centuries Iberian Christians strove to consolidate their

authority over the Muslims—their military adversity—and the Jews—their

ideological foe—and the literature that Christians composed during this

time bears witness to their efforts and attitudes. (62)

The General estoria follows the Christian tradition, outlined in the introduction, of viewing Joseph as a type of Christ. One obvious example of this is the deviation from the biblical account concerning the amount for which the brothers sold Joseph. According to 56

Genesis 37:28, the price was twenty pieces of silver, but the General estoria gives the price as thirty, which is the price for which Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus (Matt. 26:15).

Since Joseph’s brother Judah (Judas in the General estoria), is the one who suggests selling him (Genesis 37:27), this change implies not only a Joseph-Jesus parallel, but also a Judah-Judas one. D. Carpenter notes that

By far the most common accusations that Christians leveled against Jews .

. . was their alleged complicity in the death of Jesus. All other indictments,

including sorcery, blasphemy, and usury, pale in comparison with the

charge of deicide. This crime became the pretext of popes and the rallying

cry of the rabble as they proclaimed the enduring antipathy of the Church

toward the Synagogue. (D. Carpenter 62)23

Since the Jews are descendents of Judah, any association between him and the betrayer of

Christ serves to vilify them.

The General estoria offers some hope of reconciliation between Christ and the

Jews, however, symbolized in the scene of reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers. Whereas Jewish accounts, as discussed in the introduction, generally portray

Judah as strong and aggressive in his confrontation with his disguised brother, Alfonso’s version instead portrays him as humble. His speech is an entreaty to Joseph’s mercy:

E sobr’esto, señor, tú eres muy fuert en bondad, e non te venzca ira nin

destruyas a nós que tenemos que en ti es toda la nuestra salud . . . . E salva

a nós a quien tú diste la vida, e por la tu mesura libra de muerte las almas

23 He goes on to discuss this attitude in Alfonso el Sabio’s Cantigas de Santa Maria. 57

de los que non sufrist que moriéssemos de fambre . . . . E cuanto mayor es

ell yerro dell errado tenemos que tanto es mayor ell alabança del quil

perdona, ca tanto más semeja por ellos a Dios que perdona los muy

grandes pecados a los que se repienten . . . . (457)

Judah’s language here sounds very prayer-like, praising Joseph’s “bondad” and pleading for salvation. He draws a comparison between Joseph and God in the sense that both are powerful and praiseworthy for their willingness to forgive. This is an echo of the oft- repeated prayer in medieval literature: “Non cates al mi mérito, cata a tu bondad” (Berceo

826b).

Joseph grants the desired forgiveness and reveals his identity. That the reconciliation is complete is reiterated after the death of Jacob, when the brothers fear that Joseph will seize the opportunity to retaliate. They once again humble themselves before him (“e fincaron los inojos delant él”), to which Joseph reassures them:

Desí asegurólos e conortólos, e díxoles otra vez muy mansamientre que

non temiessen, ca él les darié pora sí e pora sus compañas todo lo que

mester oviessen, fiziera fasta allí en días de su padre Jacob, e que ningún

demudamiento otro non sintrién ý si non como antes era, mas aún que

mejor serié, e perdonólos allí luego. (515)

If Joseph is a type of Christ, and Judah and the other brothers are proto-Jews, then the message is that reconciliation between Spanish Christians and Jews is possible on the condition that the latter convert. Several of Alfonso’s Cantigas de Maria and Berceo’s

58

Milagros de la Virgen end with the conversion of Jews.24 This is consistent with the king’s legal codes, which declare that

No force or compulsion shall be employed in any way against a Jew to

induce him to become a Christian; but Christians should convert him to

the faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ by means of the texts of the Holy

Scriptures, and by kind words, for no one can love or appreciate a service

which is done him by compulsion. (“Siete partidas” 271)

Joseph’s own “kind words” cited above demonstrate an example of how to convert Jews to Christianity. Alfonso’s view of Spanish identity is undoubtedly Christian, and Jews that want to be a part of it need to convert.

While Jewish exegetical sources are nearly absent from the General estoria, Arab sources are accorded a great deal of respect. McGaha goes so far as to say “[t]he General

History often follows Muslim tradition in direct contradiction to the Bible . . .” (332).

Although I believe that ultimately the General estoria subjugates the Qur'an to the Bible, I agree that the Muslim version of the Joseph tale is very influential in it. Álvar says of

Alfonso: “De aquellos moros de los que supo rodearse, aprendió muchas cosas y, a la hora de preparar su historia universal, no podía descuidarse de ellos. Porque los árabes se apartaron de la verdad revelada, pero no rompieron con ella” (47). This is in keeping with

D. Carpenter’s assertion that “Christians were very aware of the material and cultural superiority of many aspects of Islamic civilization, and consequently they attempted to adopt certain of these features” (D. Carpenter 75). In spite of this admiration for the

24 For the Cantigas, see D. Carpenter 66. 59

learning of the Moors, it is important to keep in mind, as Colin Smith points out, that “the religious divide was absolute and Alfonso would have failed in his duty if he had tried to pretend otherwise” (300). I argue that the use of Muslim sources in the General estoria is a form of intellectual Orientalism that Said describes:

[T]o formulate the Orient, to give it shape, identity, definition with full

recognition of its place in memory, its importance to imperial strategy, and

its ‘natural’ role as an appendage to Europe; to dignify all the knowledge

collected during colonial occupation with the title ‘contribution to modern

learning’ . . . to feel oneself as a European in command, almost at will, of

Oriental history, time, and geography . . . . (Orientalism 86)

That is to say, that the General estoria’s treatment and control of Arab sources reflects the type of control that Alfonso sought to maintain over his Moorish vassals.

To demonstrate this manipulation of sources, I will analyze the treatment of one important source, Abu Ubayd al-Bakri’s Estoria de Egipto, in the General estoria’s version of the Joseph story. Al-Bakri, referred to in the General estoria as “el Rey de

Niebla,” lived from 1040-1094. He was in fact not a king, but rather the son of king

Abdelaziz (Fernández-Ordóñez 174). Interestingly, a later king of Niebla, Ibn Mahfut, was Alfonso’s vassal. Alfonso treated him very well after conquering his kingdom, giving him land and allowing him to retire in comfort (O’Callaghan 177). In the same way, the General estoria subjugates al-Bakri’s account while at the same time showing it great deference.

60

One area in which the General estoria gives great preference to the Muslim version is in the names of characters left unnamed in Genesis. For example, after citing the Christian scholars Godfrey, Eusebius, Sigebert, and Paulus Orosius as saying that the pharaoh at the time of Joseph was named Amosis, the Alphonsine scholars introduce al-

Bakri and his alternative version:

Mas fallamos que un rey sabio, que fue Señor de Niebla e de Salces . . .

fizo un libro en arávigo, e dízenle la Estoria de Egipto . . . . E este rey de

Niebla fablando en aquel su libro de los términos de Egipto diz que aquel

faraón . . . ovo nombre en arávigo Rayón, fijo de Alvadit, mas que los de

Egipto le dizen aún en so egipciano este otro nombre Nicrao. (409-10)

The remainder of the account consistently refers to the Egyptian king as Nicrao. Perhaps this is due to the fact, as the text says, that it is the name still used in Egypt, thereby giving it an air of authenticity. But the fact remains that in this case the account gives preference to an Arab source over the Christian theologians.

Whereas the pharaoh’s name is absent from the biblical account, thus leaving a void to be filled by Arab scholarship, the name of Potiphar’s wife must be reconciled to the biblical account. The General estoria assumes (following the Qu’ran) that Potiphar’s wife is the same woman that Joseph marries upon his release from prison. While al-Bakri gives her name as Zulaime, the Bible calls Joseph’s wife Asenath (Genesis 41:45). The

General estoria reconciles the discrepancy thusly: “E en arávigo la llaman este nombre

[Zulaime] a aquella dueña que fuera mugier de Futifar, mas fallamos que en egipciano le dizién Ascenech” (431). Notice that the discrepancy is explained away as a linguistic one: 61

instead of saying that the Moors call her Zulaime, implying a difference of religion, it is simply a difference between the Arabic and Egyptian languages. The result is that the separateness of the Muslim tradition is not recognized as such: the Moors are merely telling the story of Genesis in their own language.

McGaha admires this narrative harmonization for what he describes as its

“remarkably little prejudice regarding the provenance of those materials,” while at the same time acknowledging its frequent awkwardness (Coat 333). He uses as an example the scenes in which Zulaime attempts to seduce Joseph, where indeed the Qur’an and the

Bible are given very nearly equal weight in a somewhat awkward attempt at narrative harmonization (Coat 334). Here is his summary of it:

[T]he important scene when Joseph’s mistress tries to force him to go to

bed with her, and then Joseph encounters Phutiphar as he attempts to flee

the palace and convince Phutiphar of his innocence (Qur’an), is treated as

a separate event from the scene where the “Lady Zulayme” feigns illness

as an excuse to be left alone with Joseph on the day of the Nile festival,

when she again attempts to seduce him, and he escapes, leaving his cloak

in her hand (Bible). On this second occasion, Phutiphar “believes” her, as

in the Bible, and imprisons Joseph, yet the reason given for the

imprisonment follows Muslim tradition: he orders Joseph taken away “in

order to save his wife’s reputation and keep people from blaming her.”

The two incidents are separated by the qur’anic story of the banquet

Zulayme gives for the court ladies, yet—like a joke without its punch- 62

line—the narrative inexplicably omits the climatic moment of that scene,

when the ladies, enraptured by Joseph’s beauty, cut their hands with their

knives. (Coat 334, italics in original)

It is important to note that this clumsiness is a result of the fact that the narrative logic of the quranic account is disrupted, whereas the biblical account is left intact (although elaborated upon). Similar to the basic structure of the entire General estoria, the Genesis story is a skeleton fleshed out by details from other sources. Muslim details are accepted insofar as they clarify the Bible (as with the Pharaoh’s name) or add dramatic interest (as with the extension of the seduction episode), but that is the extent of their role. Using

Said’s words cited above, the Arabic Other is given his “‘natural’ role as an appendage to

Europe” (Orientalism 86). The anatomical metaphor here is apt given the parallel between the narrative and Alfonso’s burgeoning sense of a “body politic”: “Alfonso X did not use the word cuerpo político as such, but he compared himself and his people to the human body, emphasizing that he was the head and they were the members”

(O’Callaghan 19).

Just as the reconciliation of Muslim and Christian sources only occurs on

Christian terms, the union between Joseph and Zulaime is only possible under the appropriate circumstances, as Joseph explains to her after their wedding: “Dueña, mas vale esto de como agora es entre nós que non como vós queriedes antes” (431). The

General estoria’s retelling of Joseph’s reunion with his brothers, however, excludes al-

Bakri and any other Arab sources. As discussed earlier, these scenes cast Joseph as a

Christ figure to whom the Jews, represented by his brothers, must humble themselves. 63

Given this Christian bent, it is not surprising then that no Muslim sources would be cited in this section. The implication is that while the Moors are useful in facilitating the marriage between Christian Castile (Joseph) and classical civilization (Zulaime), they have nothing to contribute to any religious reconciliation. As the Partidas state: “the

Moors do not acknowledge a good religion” (273).

The selection and manipulation of sources in the General estoria is a conscious foray into the hybrid space between cultures that actively constructs Spanish identity. It establishes a hegemonic discourse that unites past and present to give a sense of inevitability to Alfonso’s ambitions at home and abroad. In the following sections I will analyze how Jews and Muslims use the story of Joseph to further their own ideology.

Boundary-Maintenance and Jewish Ethnicity in the Sefer ha-Yasar

While the General estoria represents an imperialist, Christian construction of identity, the Sefer ha-Yasar is part of a counter-discourse that participates in the construction of Jewish identity.25 Some mystery shrouds the origins of this work, which was originally written in Hebrew. Although it was first published c. 1550 in Naples, and the oldest known extant copies date to 1625, it is believed to have been written several centuries before (Libro xviii). McGaha dates its original composition to c. 1150-1200, whereas Moshe Lazar believes that certain influences apparent in the work make the fourteenth century a more likely timeframe. Both agree on Spain as the place of

25 There are several different works that share the title Sefer ha-Yasar or some variation thereof. Most are treatises by medieval rabbis such as Abraham Ibn Ezra, Abraham Abulafia, Rabbenu Tam, and Zerahiah ha-Yevani. 64

composition (Coat 77; Libro xvii). The version analyzed here is the first Ladino translation, taken from a written manuscript, which Lazar dates to the seventeenth century and notes that the handwriting is typical of the Ottoman diaspora (Sefer xxvi).

Thus, the work may be read as roughly contemporary with Alfonso el Sabio, with elements of translation influenced by a later Sephardic context.

Like the General estoria, the Sefer ha-Yasar is a narrative expansion of the Old

Testament, and dedicates a considerable portion to the story of Joseph. While the

Alphonsine work derives its authority largely from citing and reconciling sources, this

Jewish history presents itself as a lost book of the Bible, the “Book of Jasher” mentioned in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18 (McGaha 77). This claim lends it a different type of authority for which the citation of “sabios” is unnecessary. This does not mean, however, that the Sefer ha-Yasar is an original work; it relies heavily on Midrashic tradition for its material, and on popular contemporary European literature for its style. As with the

General estoria, the choice and treatment of details from these sources reveals the worldview of its writer as he or she retells an ancient story. It is therefore a work that contributes to the construction of Jewish identity within its Iberian context. In the following analysis, I will examine first the hybrid nature of the work as a reflection of the cultural hybridity of medieval Spain. I will then address and revise McGaha’s reading of the work as an allegory for contemporary political circumstances, offering an alternative perspective that views it as more of a simile than an allegory. Finally, I will examine the

Sefer ha-Yasar’s emphasis on Joseph’s role as vizir and Judah’s role as warrior as expressions of Jewish identity. 65

The Yasar in general, and its Ladino translation in particular, are examples of the cultural hybridity that reflects the process of acculturation in medieval Iberian Jewry. The most obvious example of this is the fact that the Ladino version is an aljamiado text, combining the Spanish language with Hebrew script. It is also a combination of genres: although its material comes largely from Jewish scripture and tradition, it is in the style of popular European literature. Lazar says:

[B]y introducing in Jewish medieval literature a series of Jewish chansons

de geste, albeit mostly in prose, the masses living in the shadow of the

cathedrals and the mosques could now find some solace and pride in

reading about their own glorious ancestors and their memorable deeds:

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, the

heroes of the Masada, Judah Maccabee and his brothers—heroes who

would not be dwarfed in comparison to all the Charlemagne, Roland, Cid,

Saladin, Artur, Lancelot, and other such historical and legendary figures.

(Libro xv)

This generic hybridity is, then, really an appropriation of the dominant discourse in order to assert ethnic identity. The term “appropriation,” as used in post-colonial studies, refers to “the ways in which post-colonial societies take over those aspects of the imperial culture—language, forms of writing, film, theatre, even modes of thought and argument such as rationalism, logic and analysis—that may be of use to them in articulating their own social and cultural identities” (Ashcroft et al.1). McGaha compares in considerable detail the Yasar with the Poema de Mio Cid, revealing a number of 66

convincing parallels (Coat 78-81). He also notes “Yashar may also have been influenced by medieval Latin lives of the saints in royal biographies (Coat 77). In either case, the appropriation serves to contrast Jewish heroes and saints with Christian ones.

A less apparent form of hybridity in the Yasar is the use of exegesis as narrative expansion. Although Jewish Midrash is very ancient and well-developed, it appears that its study had been long neglected among Spanish Jewry because, as Lazar explains,

In much the same way as Christians and Moslems had ‘christianized’ and

‘islamized’ ancient Jewish midrashic and legendary tales, the Jews were

able to ‘re-judaize’ the latter and to ‘judaize’ those stories and legends

which had originated in the religious and folkloric traditions of their

neighbors. (Libro xiv)

Thus, midrashic details were handed down to the anonymous author of the Yasar not always through Jewish tradition directly, but often filtered through the traditions of religious rivals. McGaha points out one example of this in the scene in which Joseph is on trial for allegedly attempting to seduce Potiphar’s wife (who, interestingly, is called by the name “Zalikha” common in the Muslim tradition) (Coat 81). In this episode, the judges ask whether Joseph’s garment was torn in the front or the back. Although this motif may have originated in the Jewish tradition at some point, its inclusion in the

Qur’an makes it a decidedly Muslim detail. The Yasar “judaizes” the scene, however.

Whereas in Muslim scripture the garment is torn in the back as an indication of Joseph’s innocence, implying that he was fleeing, in the Yasar the fact that it is torn in the front exculpates him, indicating that Zalikha “lo travava, y con tortura dišo estas palavras” 67

(Sefer 290). McGaha believes that this twist “may be a deliberate attempt to make the

Qur’an look foolish by turning its own story against itself, in the very same way that the

Qur’an had attempted to challenge and improve upon the version of the story in Genesis”

(Coat 82).

This interplay of hybridity and competition is reflected in the Yasar’s version of the Joseph story. Several different ethnic groups are portrayed in the work, but the major groups beside the Israelites (normally referred to as ǰudios) are the Egyptians (Miṣrāyim), the Edomites (iǰos de Esāw), and, to a lesser extent, the Ishmaelites (occasionally called

Moros). In McGaha’s view, the Edomites represent the Muslims, while the Egyptians are the Christians. This allows him to read the story, particularly the non-biblical parts that narrate the Edomite wars, as allegorical of current events in medieval Spain. He says,

Yashar’s portrayal of the ‘sons of Esau’ as treacherous, greedy, and

distrustful toward each other would then be a pejorative reflection on the

kings of Spain’s Muslim city states, or taifas, whose internecine quarrels

were blamed by Jews for bringing to an abrupt end a long period of

tolerance and prosperity. (Coat 82)

On the other hand, according to McGaha, “The Egyptians . . . represent the Castilian

Christians, who for the moment seemed to hold out the best hope for the survival of

Judaism in Spain” (Coat 81).

Although I agree that much of the turmoil and nostalgia for better times of Iberian

Jewry is reflected in this retelling of the Joseph story, McGaha goes too far in drawing

68

these strict parallels. He overlooks the fact that, in medieval Jewish literature and thought, Esau consistently represents the Christians. Bernard Septimus says,

In talmudic literature, Esau was considered the progenitor of the Romans;

‘Esau’ and ‘Edom’ became standard symbols of Rome. Ishmael was

considered the progenitor of the Arabs, and ‘Ishmael’ became their

symbol . . . . With Rome’s conversion, ‘Edom’ came to represent

Christendom—a symbol that survived the fall of the Empire.” (36)

The Sefer ha-Yasar’s version of the Joseph story is, then, a simile of the violence that surrounded its writer, but not, as McGaha would have it, a thinly veiled allegory of current events. In contrast with McGaha, I argue that the Edomites in the story are not the

Muslims of contemporary Spain, but rather the proto-Christians of the ancient world. The

Ishmaelites are the proto-Muslims of the ancient world, and the Egyptians really are

Egyptians, not Christians. 26 But Joseph’s experiences among these Egyptians are to be read as similar to those of the Jews among the now dominant Christians and Muslims in

Spain. Indeed, there are examples of this phenomenon from Jewish literature of the time.

Yitzhak Baer cites a homily that says:

We remain in the hands of the kings of the earth and are slaves to kings

and not to slaves. So was it in Egypt, and so has it also been throughout

26 One detail that may contradict this assertion comes from the Ladino version, in which Joseph refers to his Egyptian captors as “quistianos malos” (Ladino 282). McGaha’s translation of the original Hebrew version uses the phrase “uncircumcised, wicked men” (Coat 99). It is likely, therefore, that “quistianos” is being used as a generic term for the uncircumcised, since out of the three religious groups of medieval Spain, Christians are the only ones who do not practice circumcision. 69

this long exile of ours. The Jews in all the lands of their dispersion are the

property of the kings and princes, the lords of the land. (86, italics mine)

The experience of Egypt repeats, but with different groups involved.

As part of this simile between past and present, the Yasar emphasizes in particular

Joseph’s role as vizier in Egypt as reflective of this common Jewish role under both

Muslim and Christian rulers. McGaha does mention the possibility that the Yasar’s depiction of Joseph may “have been partially inspired by the illustrious career of [a Jew named] Samuel Ibn Nagrella (993-1055), who rose to the highest position of state in eleventh-century Granada and won great distinction as a general of Muslim armies” (Coat

79). Indeed, Nagrella’s description of his position is similar to the power held by Joseph:

“state counsels and affairs were in my hands, / . . . [and] no decree was ever final / but that decree had my consent” (“The Battle of Alfuente” 84). But there are in fact numerous examples of Joseph-like Jewish viziers to both Muslim and Christian rulers.

Baer says

The Jew of the Diaspora became the spiritual as well as material

middleman . . . . He became the loyal servant of the feudal lords, the

financier, tax-collector and physician of the crown. The position of the

Jews close to the court was widely regarded among them as a boon from

God. The Jewish courtier was sent by divine Providence to be the defender

of his people in time of need, and he was, moreover, permitted to pursue

secular learning. (28)

70

Another example in Muslim Spain was Abu Yusuf Hasdai ibn Shaprut, whose career, according to Baer, “served as a model and precedent for the many Jewish statesmen who flourished in Spain during the five centuries following. In his own day, his position was looked upon as a guarantee of his people’s survival” (30).

As the Reconquest advanced and Christians became the dominant power in Spain, at the same time that the Almohads were driving the Jews from Muslim territory,

Christians readily hired Jews to similar important positions:

It was but natural . . . that the experience the Jews had acquired in

administration and diplomacy be utilized. The Christian kings needed

secretaries proficient in Arabic. The Jews were familiar with the nature of

the conquered territory and its administration and knew the language and

customs of its inhabitants.” (Baer 48)

For example, Alfonso VI in the eleventh century employed Joseph Ferrizuel, known as

Cidellus. Of him, the poet Judah Halevi writes, “‘Through him the oppressive burden was lightened, for he strove and prevailed, and like a tower of might he stayed the people fleeing in ten directions.’ Like the sun he shone over the earth. With his appearance ‘the degraded people’ was relieved of oppression, for ‘his roar set the princes trembling.’”

(Baer 68-69). Interestingly, although the Yasar does not attribute a loud roar to Joseph, his brothers Simeon and Judah do have superhuman vocal capacities (Sefer 270, 350).

Jews continued to hold important government positions that allowed them to provide aid to their coreligionists throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, including Don

71

Abraham el Barchilon, Don Yuçaf de Ecija, and Don Samuel Halevi of Toledo. A

Hebrew tale recounts of Don Yuçaf:

The Lord prompted him to go to the royal court, to collect taxes and

render other services to the king. He was a true Joseph—steadfast in his

piety, wise, skilled in music, very good looking, and the Lord was with

him. And when the king found him to be trustworthy and efficient, he

appointed him over all his kingdom. There was no one greater than he in

the kingdom of Castile. He was next to the king and great among the Jews.

(Baer 325, italics mine)

As this passage demonstrates, the biblical Joseph was ever a prototype for Jewish officials in medieval Spain. It is therefore not surprising that the Yasar places so much emphasis on this role. For example, just as medieval officials were seen as “sent by

Providence,” Joseph’s career is portrayed as divinely guided. In an extra-biblical scene, the wise men of Egypt give a variety of erroneous interpretations of Pharaoh’s dream before Joseph is brought to interpret it. The narrator then explains: “que de Adonay fue esto para baldar a palavras de savios de Miṣrāyim, por que saliera Yōsēf de la carcel y para engrandecerlo en Miṣrāyim” (Sefer 306). Just as Cidellus made the princes tremble,

“todos los mayorales y los condes de el rey engrandecian a Yōsēf, y le dieron tanbien prezentes munchos, que vieron que el rey escoǧo a él por vizir” (Sefer 316). There is also an interesting emphasis on Joseph’s linguistic ability: Pharaoh wants to appoint him as vizier, but his other advisors point out “este ǰudio no save avlar otro que ǰudesco, y ¿como sera sovre mozotros por vizir, despues que no save muestra lengua?” (Sefer 312). That 72

night an angel visits Joseph and teaches him all of the seventy languages, which he demonstrates to Pharaoh the next day in order to become vizir (Sefer 312-14). This is reflective of the Jews’ above-mentioned role as translators in the newly reconquered territories. Joseph even leads Pharaoh’s armies, as did Samuel Ibn Nagrella in Granada

(Sefer 318). Just as Jewish communities often depended on their own men at court for protection, Jacob admonishes Joseph “Y no dešes de mirar a tus ermanos delantre moradores de Miṣrāyim, y no los avergonces, que en poder del Dio los dešo y despues en tu mano, que los guardes todos tus dias delantre de los Miṣrīm” (Sefer 364-66). In all of these examples, the Egyptians happen to be the nation fulfilling the role of dominant power, and while Joseph’s relationship to this power is interpreted through the lens of the medieval Jewish experience, it would be erroneous to assume a strictly allegorical parallel between Egypt and the Christian kingdoms.

On the other hand, the Ishmaelites and Edomites in the story are respectively the forerunners of the Muslims and the Christians. Negative qualities are attributed to both, and the foundations of enmity between them and the Jews are emphasized, but they are not yet in positions of power over the Jews analogous to the medieval Spanish political situation. The Yasar’s depiction of these proto-Muslims and -Christians emphasizes their weakness and treachery, while the Israelites are portrayed as dominant warriors. Since, according to Lazar, the

author of the Sēfer ha-Yāšār . . . might well have had a solid knowledge of

the King’s General Estoria, it is reasonable to infer some dialogue

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between the two as the former undermines the hegemonic discourse of

imperial inevitability set forth in the latter. (Joseph and His Brethren xiv)

While the General estoria traces Christian political power to the Romans, Greeks, and

Egyptians, the Yasar portrays them as descendents of a week and petty nation. At the very least, the Yasar’s depiction of the Christians’ and Muslims’ ancestors is a reflection of the struggle of a religious minority to maintain its identity and influence during a time of Christian ascendancy.

The Ishmaelites are not prominent figures in the Yasar, which is in keeping with their relatively minor role in Jewish thought: “‘Edom’ had already attained the status of

Israel’s arch-enemy in rabbinic literature. But in kabbalistic literature, ‘Edom’ assumes cosmic proportions and a quasi-demonic character. Ishmael, on the other hand, is a minor subject of speculation, and a less important player in the eschatological drama” (Septimus

48). The few mentions of them in the Yasar portray them as cruel and weak. For example, after the brothers sell Joseph to the Midianites, they in turn sell him to a caravan of “Moros” (Sefer 272). They are extremely cruel to Joseph: “Y cansose Yōsēf por el camino, que no podia caminar de muncha amargura de su alma; y lo harvaron [beat] todos, y lo espantavan para que cayara del yoro” (Sefer 274). Even though God then intervenes and withers their hands, they do not seem to understand the warning, because, when Joseph is speaking to his mother at her grave, “Y lo vido uno de los Moros que yorava y esclamava de la fuesa, y erecio su folor sovre él, y lo desterro de aí, y lo ḥarvo .

. .” (Sefer 276). This continued cruelty after divine warning implies that the Jews perceived the Muslims as stubborn and ignorant. 74

One of Joseph’s first duties as vizier, however, is to lead a military expedition to assist the Ishmaelites in their war against the sons of Tarshish. They are successful in conquering the land of Tarshish, “y estuvieron en ellas los iǰos de Yišmāēl asta oy” (Sefer

318). Since Tarshish is often associated with Spain, McGaha believes that “This story seems to attribute the original presence of Arabs in Spain to Jewish military assistance”

(Coat 82). Regardless of whether or not this is the case, it portrays the Arabs’ progenitors as weak and in need of assistance. This construction of the Muslim Other allows the Jews to construct their own identity as strong and warlike, as I will discuss briefly.

Of far greater importance than its portrayal of Ishmaelites is the Yasar’s strong sub-plot that traces the source of the Israel-Edom, Jew-Christian rivalry. A significant moment in Genesis is the reconciliation between Jacob and his twin Esau (Genesis 33).

When their father Isaac dies, the biblical account is laconic: “Esav and Yaakov his sons buried him” (Gen. 35:29). The Yasar significantly expands this account, detailing the division of inheritance between the sons. Jacob is allowed to make the division, and Esau the assignment. Jacob decides that one should receive the acienda, or servants and livestock, and the other should receive the claim to the land of Canaan. Esau decides to consult with Nebaioth, one of the sons of Ishmael, for advice in choosing his portion of the inheritance. Nebaioth counsels him to take the acienda, which he does, leaving the claim to Canaan to Jacob. The entire process is handled amicably (Sefer 300-02).

The implications of this narrative expansion are deeply political. For one thing, it portrays Esau as dependent on the Ishmaelites, a commonplace in medieval Jewish literature—as Septimus has said, “Edom and Ishmael are frequently linked in Hispano- 75

Jewish literature as Exile’s twin oppressors” (43). In addition, Esau’s indecisiveness is perhaps a commentary on the relatively low cultural level of the incipient Christian powers in reconquered territories: “To Maimonides, emigrating to Edom meant putting one’s offspring at risk of perpetual cultural backwardness” (Septimus 44). Primarily, however, the funeral scene serves to emphasize Israel’s claim to the land of Canaan: “Y fue toda tierra de Kĕnaān a iǰos de Yisrāēl por eredad asta sienpre, y Esāw y sus iǰos eredaron a monte de Seīr” (Sefer 302).

Thus, when Jacob dies, and (in a narrative expansion) Esau tries to prevent his burial in the cave of Machpelah that was part of the land of Canaan inheritance, the reader already knows that Esau is reneging on an agreement. In fact, Joseph sends

Naphtali back to Egypt to retrieve the written contract that had been made. In the meantime, a battle begins between the Edomites and the Israelites, in which Husim, the deaf-mute son of Dan, kills Esau: “Y enterraron iǰos de Yaaqoḅ a su padre con fuerça en la mĕārāh [cave], y los iǰos de Esāw mirando” (Sefer 370-72). Much of what follows in the Joseph chapters of this work recounts the battles between the Israelites and the

Edomites and their allies, emphasizing the strength of the former and the cowardice and weakness of the latter. And lest the reader forget the connection between past and present, the narrator comments after one of the battles “De cierto, del dia el este adelantre, aborrecieron iǰos de Esāw a iǰos de Yaaqoḅ, y fue la aborricion y la malquerencia fuerte entre ellos todos los dias asta el dia el este” (Sefer 384).

Jewish strength and bellicosity is a major theme in the Yasar. This is not surprising, given the influence of European epics and novels of chivalry that both 76

McGaha and Lazar discuss (Coat 78-81, Sefer ix). For example, unlike the penitent Judah of the General estoria, the Yasar’s Judah and other brothers are portrayed as extremely belligerent in their (unbeknownst to them) meeting with Joseph. In keeping with a common Midrashic motif, Simeon resists arrest by screaming very loudly, and Joseph’s son Manasseh responds by stabbing him in the neck. The brothers cannot believe that an

Egyptian would be capable of such a feat: “no es sino golpe de ǧente de mi padre” (Sefer

330). When the brothers return a second time to Egypt, they bring with them a letter from

Jacob demanding Simeon’s release and reminding the vizier of Jewish exploits: “¿No saves, rey de Miṣrāyim, que la baragania de muestro Dio está con mosotros? Y tambien el Dio olye a muestra oracion, que no mos deša de ningun modo” (Sefer 338). When

Joseph arrests Benjamin, Judah responds by breaking down the door and threatening

“Porqué te perderas tu toda la ǧente de Miṣrāyim?” (Sefer 344). Even when Judah softens his tone and offers himself in Benjamin’s place, he emphasizes his bellicosity: “Y si me queres enbiar que te sierva con mi baragania, enbiame a cualesquer rey que queres, que tienes pelea, y veras lo que le aré y a toda su tierra” (Sefer 352). Such is the reputation and fear of the Jews in the Yasar that when Pharaoh finds out that Joseph’s brothers are in Egypt, he reprimands him: “¿Por destruir a todo Miṣrāyim trušistes a estos ǰudios?”

(Sefer 350).

The combination of the depiction of Edomites as weak and cowardly with the portrayal of the Jews as strong and warlike functions as a counter-discourse to the

Christian sense of imperial inevitability prevalent during the second period. If, as

Carpenter asserts, the Christians viewed the Jews as intellectual rivals, the Yasar 77

emphasizes instead the military enmity that, according to their version of history, had long existed between these groups. By representing the Jews as eternally at odds with the

Christians, the Sefer ha-Yasar asserts Jewish identity against the Other, and maintains the

Jewish community’s boundaries against assimilation.

Muslim Religious Survival in the Leyenda de José

The Leyenda de José is a handwritten Morisco-aljamiado text produced in the crypto-Muslim communities of Aragon, probably sometime between the forced conversions of 1526 and the expulsions of 1609-1612.27 As such, it participates in the construction and conservation of Morisco identity precisely at the time when that identity was being threatened with eradication by the homogeonizing policies of Catholic Spain.

It therefore corresponds to the Christian hegemony of the fourth period in much the way that the Sefer ha-Yasar does to the Christian ascendancy of the second period. This, along with its more medieval style discussed earlier, justifies its comparison with thirteenth- century versions. After a brief overview of Spanish crypto-Islam and its manuscript culture, I will analyze the assertion of Morisco identity in Leyenda as manifested through the depiction of Joseph as a good Muslim, the inclusion of details that would have resonated particularly with the Morisco community, and the preeminence of narrative authority over narrative logic in the handling of sources.

27 McGaha dates it to c. 1450-1550 (Coat 155). Ursula Klenk believes it was written between 1550-1600 (402). I base my estimate on the fact that aljamiado texts are largely a manifestation of crypto-Islam (see Harvey 133). 78

As the Reconquest advanced, those Muslims who remained in newly Christian territories became in many ways at least outwardly acculturated into their new societies.

McGaha points out that even “[b]y the mid-thirteenth century most of the Mudejars of

Castile and Aragon were Romance speakers and had forgotten most of their Arabic”

(Coat 159). Christian rulers such as Alfonso, as noted above, valued the intellectual contributions of both Muslims and Jews and were generally inclined to allow those groups to practice their religions within a (sometimes uneasy) system of convivencia.

This relative tolerance continued in the Capitulations that Ferdinand and Isabel negotiated for the surrender of Granada, which were tremendously generous in the legal and social benefits that they gave the defeated Muslims. In terms of religious freedom, the Capitulations say the following:

Their highnesses and their successors will ever afterwards . . . allow King

Abi Abdilehi and his alcaides, judges, muftīs, alguaciles, military leaders,

and good men, and all the common people, great or small, to live in their

own religion, and not permit that their mosques be taken from them, nor

their minarets nor their muezzins, nor will they interfere with the pious

foundations or endowments which they have for such purposes, nor will

they disturb the uses and customs which they observe. (“Capitulations”

345)

This tolerance would not last, however: a combination of pressure from the Catholic

Church, the homogeonizing tendencies of the new Spanish empire, and a fear of the

Turks led to a series of forced conversions of the Spanish Muslims, starting in Castile in 79

1500 and culminating in Aragon in 1526 (Harvey 14). Along with these forced religious conversions came “a new series of draconian injunctions [that] sought to eliminate all vestiges of a separate culture among the Moriscos” (McGaha, Coat 158).

Although many Muslims fled Spain because of these injunctions, many stayed because, as Cervantes’ Morisco character Ricote puts it, “Que en fin nacimos en [España] y es nuestra patria natural” (Don Quijote 762). The Muslims considered themselves just as truly Spaniard as their Christian neighbors, yet were being forced to deny another important part of their identity. Vincent Barletta says,

Given the largely coercive nature of the Moriscos’ conversion to

Christianity . . . the vast majority of these converts from Islam, and their

descendents, led a complex and largely hidden life as secret or crypto-

Muslims throughout the sixteenth and into the seventeenth centuries. (ix)

As a result, as L.P. Harvey puts it, “once these Muslims had been forced to pretend to be what they were not, a new situation came into being, a new complex, and inherently muddled identity was in play,” as had happened to the Jews in the previous century (5).

The reconciliation between devotion to Islam and the need to keep that devotion secret in order to maintain Spanish identity was indeed complex. On the one hand, the

“Moriscos remained, for the most part, unshakably attached to Islam and its related cultural traditions. In some ways, in response to Christian pressure, they entrenched themselves in it even more deeply” (López-Morillas 196). Part of this boundary- maintaining mechanism was a perhaps greater than ever attachment to orthodoxy: “Si el

Islam ha sido reacio a las innovaciones, en el caso morisco lo fue más, puesto que lo que 80

se pretendía era conservar sus rasgos de identidad gravemente amenazados” (Cervera

Fras 328). On the other hand, a cleric from Oran in 1504 issued a fatwa or religious edict that “sets out for the benefit of the persecuted Muslims of Spain what modification might legitimately be introduced in the range of religious obligations incumbent on a Muslim when he is being subjected to oppression” (Harvey 60). Here is a passage from that fatwa:

If you are prevented from praying, then you should make up at night-time

what you had to omit during the day; and when ritually pure water is for

practical purposes lacking, then you must wipe yourself clean . . . , even if

it is just by rubbing your hands clean on a wall. If that is not possible, the

generally held view is that the prayer and its execution are not required in

the absence of water or clean stone, although you should make some slight

pointing motion with your hands or face toward clean earth or stone or a

tree such as would have been ritually acceptable for that purpose . . . . (qtd.

in Harvey 61)

Thus, in facing the need to preserve their faith against opposition, the Moriscos both strengthened their desire for orthodoxy and modified their practice of Islam.

The aljamía manuscript tradition became one of the principal vehicles for the preservation of religious identity. As María José Cervera Fras says, “[La] finalidad [de los escritos aljamiados] es asegurar la continuidad espiritual y la identidad islámica entre estos hispano-musulmanes contra la progresiva aculturación hispano-cristiana a que se veían abocados” (Cervera Fras 327-28). These texts are as hybrid as the identity of the 81

people who produced them and reflect the interplay between religious conservatism and the innovation of their culture:

En la medida en que los moriscos veían en su islamismo una forma de

vida con unos contenidos y unas pautas de conducta distintas del

cristianismo, se esfuerzan también en crear una lengua, una literatura, un

sistema de signos que reflejen, simbolicen y signifiquen esos contenidos

religiosos, estéticos y culturales. (Vespertino Rodríguez 95)

On the one hand the aljamiado texts are written in Arabic characters, about which

Galmés de Fuentes explains, “en el Islam, más que la lengua, es la grafía árabe la que conserva un valor simbólico, que se eleva al prestigio coránico” (“Lengua” 27). On the other hand, these Arabic characters are used to write in what critics and linguists call a

“variante islámica del español” (Cervera Fras 328; Galmés de Fuentes, “Lengua” 38).

Cervera Fras explains:

La vinculación de la aljamía al árabe no se reduce al aspecto externo;

además de la grafía, toma de éste estructuras sintácticas, estilísticas,

léxicas y semánticas. La lengua de los textos aljamiados no representa el

habla cotidiana de los moriscos, que compartirían con sus vecinos

cristianos, sino que está salpicado de préstamos y calcos del árabe. (328-

29)

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The meeting of Arabic and Romance in aljamiado texts therefore produces a new hybrid language with which to express identity.28

As F. Guillén Robles explains, the Moriscos writers used this new language in a variety of genres: “hay entre ellos originales y traducciones, prosa y verso, obras de jurisprudencia, recetarios, traducciones y comentarios del Alcorán, libros religiosos y morales, itinerarios geográficos, fragmentos históricos, cuentos y leyendas” (Leyendas xi). Barletta points out that those works dealing with Muslim prophets and heroes were of particular importance in the Morisco struggle “to be at once fully Spanish and Muslim in a nation that was steadily growing to see these social categories as mutually exclusive”

(xxii). As one of these works, the Leyenda de José participates in the complex struggle to construct and preserve Morisco identity. In the following analysis I will examine how the

Leyenda depicts the prophet-hero Joseph as a good Muslim, how this work emphasizes issues relevant to the Morisco situation, and what, in comparison with the General estoria, the handling of sources reveals about the sense of narrative authority among the

Moriscos.

Writing in the late nineteenth century, Guillén Robles says that

la vida de Yúsuf ben Yakúb fué entre sarracenos tan popular, como entre

los hebreos, y aun mucho más que entre cristianos: José fué para ellos

emblema viviente de la virtud sin tacha, perseguida y domeñada durante

28 For an interesting debate on this process of hybridization, see the articles by López- Baralt and López-Morillas. The former characterizes the Arabization of Spanish as an “empobrecimiento,” while the latter argues that it is in fact a sign of admirable adaptation and creativity similar to the Latinization of language carried out by Christian contemporaries. I tend to agree with López-Morillas. 83

largo tiempo por la invidia y la iniquidad, protegida por aquella justicia de

Allah, de la cual los musulmanes tuvieron en todo tiempo altísima idea,

recompensada al cabo, sublimada sobre la humana miseria . . . .”

(Leyendas xvii)

In other words, Joseph exhibits the characteristics of a good Muslim. In Islam, Joseph is one in the long line of anabis (prophets) who preceded Muhammad, and thus it is not considered anachronistic to depict him as a Muslim. The Leyenda emphasizes this point.

For example, it cites the quranic passage in which Joseph, while in prison, explains to the butler and the baker that “yo e leššado ll’almila [religion] de konpanna ke no k(e)reyen kon Allāh i šon kon la taura addunyā [worldly Torah] ešk(e)re’doš. I šigo ell-almilla de miš padreš Ibrahīm, Ismā(c)īl, Isḥāq i Ya(c)qūb” (Leyenda 54). This passage lays claim to Joseph as a Muslim hero, defined negatively as not a Jewish one, as emphasized by the anachronism of contrasting him with those who believe in the Torah (which did not exist at the time of Joseph). Not only was Joseph a Muslim, so were his predecessors

Abraham, Ishmael (the progenitor of the Arabs, listed as a prophet in contradiction to

Judeo-Christian belief), Isaac, and Jacob. Other anachronisms that reinforce this idea: in

Joseph’s first dream his “berdugo,” or “branch” becomes a fruitful tree from which

Jacob, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad eat (Leyenda 3). The latter three had not even been born at the time of Joseph, but are considered among the most important prophets in

Islam. Later, Joseph praises the Qur’an, even though it was not yet written and his own story is a part of it (11). Finally, when Jacob allows the brothers to take Benjamin to

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Egypt, he requires them to swear by Muhammad that they will take care of their youngest brother (77).

Such anachronisms make it apparent that the Moriscos did not read the Leyenda as a work of ancient history (in the way that they Jews read the Yasar), but rather as an eternally relevant and timeless scriptural history easily applicable to their own situation.

In that sense, I am in disagreement with McGaha’s assertion that “[i]t is easy to see why the Moriscos of fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Spain would have looked back nostalgically to an earlier, happier age and would have found comfort in the escapist fantasy embodied in the Story of Yusuf” (Coat 162). The Leyenda is not a form of escape from the Morisco situation, but rather in many ways a reflection thereof. Vespertino

Rodríguez confirms this idea when, speaking of aljamiado literature in general, he says:

La literatura aljamiado-morisca refleja en todo momento la realidad socio-

cultural de sus autores, plenamente integrados en la cultura y en el

pensamiento islámicos. Dentro de su islamización, representa la de los

moriscos una modalidad cultural original y propia en cuanto que aquellos

utilizan la materia islámica reorganizándola a sus propios intentos para dar

testimonio de sus especiales circunstancias y abrir caminos de esperanza a

su atribulada situación. (111)

Harvey adds that,

the ancient literature of the hadith, which, so we would assume, could

have nothing to communicate to crypto-Muslims about the daily

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tribulations of life in Spain in the sixteenth century, was felt by them to

refer directly to their particular condition. (148)

As described above, the “particular condition” of the Moriscos is that of a religious group struggling to preserve its faith and identity under persecution. They were, in a sense, exiles in their own land, so Joseph’s trials both among his brethren and in

Egypt are relatable to the Morisco situation. For example, when Joseph is in the well, the angel Gabriel comes to comfort him. As part of his visit, the heavenly messenger teaches him the prayers that he will need to know in order to get help while in Egypt (Leyenda

16). Harvey’s overview of books known to have been available to the Moriscos includes mention of a collection of “prayers for all occasions: ‘from morning till night, and all through life until death’” (157). Thus, the knowledge of prayers to fit certain circumstances while in exile would have been an important part of crypto-Islam.

The theme of persecution is inherent in most versions of the Joseph story and would have resonated particularly with the Morisco community, which had to be on constant guard under the panoptic gaze of the Inquisition. The Leyenda certainly emphasizes this theme in a number of ways. For example, after Joseph has been sold and is being taken to Egypt, he passes his mother Rachel’s grave and laments his sufferings to her:

yā [oh] mi madre, yā Rrahīl, ¡ši me ubi(y)ešeš bišto! Ya me deššaron šolo,

algaribo [stranger, foreigner], i no kataron ad-Allāh, ta(c)ālā, en mi. yā mi

madre, yā Rrahīl, ¡ ši šubi(y)ešeš lo k’a še’ido bendido bendida

d’ešk(a)labo dešpu(w)eš de šer hurọ [free], eng(i)rillonado y-enkadenado 86

šinše pekado! . . . i oyo Yusuf un g(i)ritante ke dezi(y)a: sufri, ke no eš tu

suf(e)rennsi(y)a šino kon Allāh, ta(c)ālā. (Leyenda 21-22)

The idea of suddenly changing from a free status to one of foreigner and slave certainly reflects, at least metaphorically if not literally, the abrupt changes that occurred in the

Morisco situation at the beginning of the sixteenth century. If Joseph’s complaints reflect those of the crypto-Muslims, then the voice (presumably Rachel’s) that responds to him communicates perhaps one of the main themes of the work: the idea that suffering occurs according to God’s will. Harvey explains that the author of the Fatwa of Oran accords a special status to the Moriscos in Spain because of their circumstances:

These people . . . were ‘outsiders’ in the sense that they were physically

outside the bounds of dar al-Islam, but they had nevertheless been

entrusted with a special honorable role in stressful times leading up to

Judgment Day. (63)

Thus, at the same time that Joseph is comforted in his suffering, the Moriscos are reassured that their difficulties fit into a divine plan.

This recontextualization of the story carries with it, as Charles L. Briggs and

Richard Bauman put it,

negotiations of identity and power—by invoking a particular genre,

producers of discourse assert (tacitly or explicitly) that they possess the

authority needed to decontextualize discourse that bears these historical

and social connections and to recontextualize it in the current discursive

setting. (qtd. in Barletta xx) 87

The question, then, is what genre does the Leyenda invoke? McGaha says the following:

[P]erhaps the best way to understand the Story of Yusuf is to view it as a

Morisco romance of chivalry in which the originally Christian literary

genre is adapted to embody the ideals of Islam. If the Joseph of Yashar is

the Jewish Cid, Yusuf is the Morisco Amadís. (Coat 164)

I disagree with this evaluation, which seems to be based mainly on the abundance of fantastical material included in the work. The problem is that those scenes are only magical to modern sensibilities. As Vespertino Rodríguez says of such material in aljamiado literature, “No se trata, pues, de leyendas fantasiosas sino de relatos dogmáticos de la fe musulmana” (101). I believe that the Leyenda bears far closer comparison to the General estoria in that both aspire to compile a complete historical

(albeit scriptural) account of events. Both contain material that to the modern reader seems flights of fantasy, but their compilers do not build credibility based on the verisimilitude of the stories, but rather on the authority of the sabios who recount those stories.

Although the General estoria and the Leyenda have in common the general intent to compile history, the circumstances in which they were produced are quite different. As discussed above, the General estoria is written from a position of power from which

Alfonso’s scholars submit a variety of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and pagan sources to their editorial imperialism in order to justify the incipient Castilian hegemony. The

Leyenda comes from an underground resistance community struggling for the very survival of its cultural and religious identity. Its compiler draws upon a limited number of 88

strictly Muslim sources, and, while the Alphonsine team attempts to reconcile the details of its sources, the Leyenda’s editor is willing to sacrifice narrative logic in the interest of including everything that “noš llego del rrekontami(y)ento de Ya(c)qūb i de šu fiǧo

Yusuf” (Leyenda 98). This insistence on the inclusion of sources to the detriment of narrative logic reflects the Moriscos’ heroic and, perhaps, quixotic struggle to maintain an illegal identity.

Examples of this disruption of narrative logic abound, but one particularly striking one will suffice here: Jacob’s knowledge that Joseph is still alive. As in the Qur’an, the brothers return to tell Jacob that Joseph has been killed by a wild beast after they throw him into the well but before they sell him. Jacob goes into the wilderness to mourn, and then returns to ask the brothers to find the wolf who killed Joseph. They bring back a wolf, which is granted the ability to speak and says to Jacob: “por la onrra de mi Šennor i

šu nobleza, no e yo komido a tu fiǧo ǧamaš, i yo soy enchuri(y)ado i(y)-enfamado a

šinrrazon” (15). Jacob does not seem to take any action based on this knowledge, however, other than to exclaim: “¡o, ta mala para mi! ¿en ku(w)al montanna t’an ent(a)rado y-en ku(w)al chošrriba [cave] te an pu(w)ešto?” (16).

The narration then moves back to Joseph’s suffering in the well and sale to the caravan. Once he is in Egypt and sold to the king (not Potiphar, as in the Bible), he and the king go for a ride outside of the city. They stop to rest, and an Arab on camel passes by. The camel, seeing Joseph’s great beauty, “bino enta el i fizole obidensi(y)a” (31). In the discussion that follows between the Arab and Joseph, the reader learns that the Arab knows Jacob and knows of his missing son. Joseph tells the Arab who he is, and sends 89

him to tell Jacob that he is still alive (32-34). The Arab obeys, and Jacob is so overjoyed that he blesses the Arab with a palace and 24 sons (37-38). Yet Jacob still does nothing with this knowledge that Joseph is alive and in Egypt.

Later, when Joseph is incarcerated, an Arab passes by the prison and speaks with him. There is no indication that this is the same Arab from the previous encounter, but once again Joseph sends him to tell Jacob that he is still alive but in prison (51-52). Jacob does not bless the Arab this time, perhaps because his news was bad (53). These two encounters seem similar enough to be two variants of the same “Joseph sends Arab to

Jacob” motif, but different enough in their details to indicate that they come from separate sources.29

There is yet a third Arab who meets with Jacob, but there is a twist on the motif this time. This Arab, one of Joseph’s fellow prisoners, is “un onb(e)re de loš enemigoš del rrey . . . i(y)-era muy malo para laš chenteš i fazi(y)a muchoš maleš a loš p(e)rešos de la karsel.” For this reason, the king orders that he be transferred to another prison “en ti(y)erraš de Falastịn.” Jacob approaches the Arab prisoner as he passes through Canaan and inquires after Joseph, and the Arab lies and tells him that his son is dead (55). This detail at this point in the narrative could explain why, when Jacob sends the brothers to

Egypt to buy food, it does not even occur to him to have them look for Joseph. The problem is that, immediately after hearing that Joseph is dead, he speaks to his friend

29 The theologian Ka’b (“Ka(c)bu Alāḥbār”) is cited as the source for the first scene. The text does not specify the source of the second. 90

Malaku˙lmauti, who assures him that Joseph is indeed alive! (55-56). Jacob’s failure to think of Joseph when sending the other sons to Egypt is therefore inexplicable.

As I discuss above, the need to include every Muslim source takes precedence over narrative logic in the Leyenda, which explains the inverisimilitude of a father who learns repeatedly that his favorite son is still alive, yet does not act upon that knowledge.

This does not preclude, however, a thematic logic to these events. At the end of the work, the narrator cites Ibnu Al(c)abās to explain that Jacob had separated a baby from one of his slave women, and that his own separation from Joseph was therefore his punishment from God for that action (97-98). His failure to act on the frequent reminders that Joseph is alive is an indication of his submission to God, the main tenant of Islam and a major theme in this work. While Alfonso’s efforts to reconcile sources reflect his imperial ambitions, the preeminence of preservation of Islamic details and themes over narrative logic in the Leyenda reflects the Morisco community’s struggle for cultural survival at a time when most of Spain no longer viewed Islam as a logical component in its society.

The three works examined in this chapter have more in common than the fact that they are written in prose. Each demonstrates cultural hybridity as a result of medieval

Iberian inter-religious contact. At the same time, each works within this hybrid space to assert a distinctive ethnic identity. Although Joseph fits into biblical history before the establishment of any of the three monotheistic religions, each group remakes him into one of their own. His story is made to reflect contemporary circumstances and used to either justify or undermine the status quo. Finally, the authors of each work actively

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construct a sense of narrative authority through their selection and presentation of source material that serves to maintain cultural boundaries and preserve ethnic identity.

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Chapter 2: Appropriation and Boundary Maintenance in Fourteenth-Century

Narrative Poetry

The fourteenth century saw the production of two anonymous poetic versions of the Joseph story: the Jewish Coplas de Yosef and the Muslim Poema de José. Historians tend to view this century as a particularly difficult one for Europe in general, and particularly for these two minority groups living in Christian Spain. For example, David

Nirenberg says, “In modern texts the words ‘fourteenth century’ are often accompanied by others such as ‘calamitous’ and ‘crisis’” (18). He adds that “the fourteenth century pivoted on a mortality so massive, so widespread, and so unexpected that it has few parallels in any age” (18), and that “[f]or minorities, the fourteenth century was among the most violent of centuries” (Nirenberg 19). Katrin Kogman-Appel echoes these thoughts, noting that “the entire period was marked by insecurity. The havoc wrought by the epidemic added to the general sense of decline and despondency. Terror and brutality dominated political life . . .” (14).

In addition to the dangers of violence and disease, both minority groups were subject to the effects of acculturation and assimilation. The fourteenth century falls squarely within Glick and Pi-Sunyer’s third period discussed in the previous chapter, characterized by “Christian ascendancy” and “mounting pressure towards assimilation” for minority groups. As a response, Jewish and Muslim communities resorted to boundary-maintaining mechanisms that are reflected in their cultural production. On the one hand, both the Coplas and the Poema demonstrate generic hybridity by appropriating the Christian cuaderna vía form made famous by Berceo. On the other hand, both express 93

some form of resistance to cultural assimilation. The Jewish Coplas form part of the carnivalesque Purim celebration, and participate in its temporary topsy-turviness as a way of mocking the processes of acculturation and ultimately reaffirming cultural identity.

The Muslim Poema, on the other hand, emphasizes Moorish difference in a more somber ritualistic context.

The Coplas de Yosef: Poetry in Purim, and Purim in Poetry

The Coplas de Yosef is a Jewish narrative poem in Hebrew aljamía dating from the fourteenth century, although available manuscripts date from the following century.30

Like the three prose versions of the Joseph story studied in the previous chapter, the

Coplas combine the biblical narrative with exegetical material, in this case from the rich midrashic tradition of medieval Judaism.31 Although rooted in these pan-Judaic scriptural and exegetical sources, the poem reflects the cultural hybridity of the Spanish Jews and serves as a vehicle for the assertion of Jewish identity during a time when that identity was coming under attack.32 In this essay, I will first examine those details in the poem that assert Jewish identity and strength (as in the Sefer ha-Yasar), and that reflect the feeling of exile. Then, I will analyze the poem’s festival context as part of the Purim

30 For a complete manuscript history, see Girón-Negrón and Minervini 18-21. 31 “El cuidado exquisito en la integración narrativa de materia midráshica se evidencia a lo largo del poema” (Girón-Negrón and Minervini 39). 32 Although there is insufficient information to determine whether the Coplas were composed before or after the pogroms of 1391, animosity towards the Jews was increasing throughout the century (see Baer 378). In addition, the poem appears to have been extremely popular among post-expulsion Sephardic communities who had already experienced the full force of anti-Semitic hostility (Girón-Negrón and Minervini 17). 94

celebration, arguing that the Coplas play a part in this festival’s role in dealing with the

Jewish condition.

The Coplas are written in a variation of the cuaderna vía that Paloma Díaz-Mas has dubbed “la clerecía rabínica” (in reference to the phrase mester de clerecía). It consists of stanzas of four alexandrine lines rhyming AAAV, each stanza ending with the word “Yosef” (“Género” 332). Girón-Negrón and Minervini further describe this adaptation: “versos monorrimos con cesura, rima homoioteleuton y rima interna entre los primeros hemistiquios—tiene sus correlatos en la poesía estrófica hebrea, sobre todo los muwaššaḥāt y otras formas zejelescas” (51). They also point out the cultural hybridity of this poetic form: “Es esta imbricación fecunda de sensibilidades poéticas arraigadas en dos subsuelos—el hispánico y el hebraico—la carta de identidad de la <>” (52). In other words, just as the aljamiado script allows the Jews to make their own unique form of the dominant language, the “clerecía rabínica” is a way of adopting a poetic form popular among Christian clerics and, by semiticizing it, creating a new genre that reflects the hybrid nature of their own cultural identity. This is another prime example of appropriation, which as discussed in the previous chapter, refers to

the ways in which post-colonial societies take over those aspects of the

imperial culture—language, forms of writing, film, theatre, even modes of

thought and argument such as rationalism, logic and analysis—that may

be of use to them in articulating their own social and cultural identities.

(Ashcroft et al.1)

95

The social and cultural identity articulated in the Coplas is not necessarily that of a “post-colonial society,” but rather that of a minority group within an increasingly hostile Christian society. Baer, speaking of the war between Henry of Trastámara and

Pedro the Cruel in the fourteenth century, says, “In general, the civil war wrought ruin and demoralization in the Jewish communities of Castile, and intensified antisemitism”

(368). Benjamin R. Gampel adds: “One of Henry’s devices in gaining the support of the nobility and others within the kingdom was his promulgation of fierce anti-Jewish sentiments” (26). These conditions are reflected in the poem. On the one hand, the Jews are depicted nostalgically as strong warriors. On the other hand, the idea of living one’s

Judaism in a Gentile society is shown to be increasingly difficult.

Similar to the Sefer ha-Yasar, the Coplas depict Judah, the father of the Jews, as strong and warlike. His epic epithet is “Yehudah el fuerte” (14a).33 He and Joseph are portrayed as having superhuman powers:

Yosef non fue ma[n]sedo, tomó saña consigo,

muy presto y muy çedo tomó granos de trigo,

moliólos con su dedo como si fuese figo,

pensó meter miedo a Yehudah Yosef.

Yehudah el su çerro alço como alimaña,

luego muele azero tan fuerte era su saña,

33 Citations by stanza number and line letter. All citations from the poem come from Girón-Negrón and Minervini. 96

temían de seer en yerro toda esa compaña,

pareçe sogar de fierro Yehudah a Yosef. (181-82)

Of this show of strength, Girón-Negrón and Minervini say that “este Judá sansonesco . . . simboliza al pueblo judío favorecido por Dios de cara a sus enemigos” (66). To a Jewish audience of the fourteenth century, and even more so to a recently exiled Sephardic audience, this celebration of Jewish bellicosity is more than anything a nostalgic idealization of the past. This yearning for former glory is also forward looking, as manifested in the messianism to which many Jews of the time were turning, and that the prophecy of the last few stanzas of the poem expresses explicitly:

De Roma aun venrá un falso renovadó

y luego ledierá con ese puevlo onrado,

ese malo vençerá al nuestro rey onrado

y luego murirá Masiah ben Yosef.

El go’el legará mucho presuroso

y luego lidiará como ombre poderoso

y luego matará al varón alevoso

y aveviguará al fijo de Yosef. (307-08)34

In contrast with the mythic nostalgia and prophetic messianism, the poem also makes reference to the day-to-day aspects of diasporic living. The best example of this is

34 According to Girón-Negrón and Minervini, these verses prophesy of two Messiahs: the first a descendent of Joseph, who will be treacherously killed by the king of Rome. The second is a descendent of Judah, who will avenge the first’s death (324) 97

Jacob’s prayer before joining Joseph in Egypt: “Gran miedo é yo de gente tan estraña,/ non pueden ver judió en juego nin en saña,/ maravíllome como vivió entre ellos Yosef”

(254bcd). The first two of these lines could easily be applied to the conditions of Jews living in a Christian society, where antisemiticism manifests itself even “en juego.”35

Jacob’s wonder at the fact that Joseph survived such circumstances would have rung familiar to a Jewish audience with parallel experiences.

This emphasis on dealing with exile is significant because, as most scholars agree, the Coplas were intended for declamation during the Purim celebration.36 Of this holiday,

Monford Harris says, “Purim . . . enables the Jew to cope with a great task: coming to grips with exile” (166). André LaCocque adds that “Purim . . . comes as pause, a counterpoint, or even as the brave affirmation of another world in the midst of this baleful one rife with the possibility of continued threats to the people’s existence” (14). The reason that Purim functions as a way of coping with the difficulties of exile is that it is a celebration of the triumph of the biblical figure of Esther, a Jew who married the king of

Persia and rescued her people from Haman’s genocidal plot. Díaz-Mas describes how it was celebrated in Judeo-Spanish communities:

The only distinguishing feature of the religious celebration is the reading

of the megilla [scroll] that tells the biblical story of Esther. It is at home

and in public that the real celebration takes place, a celebration similar to

35 An example is the Libro de buen amor, a paragon of literary playfulness that, although sometimes more tolerant in its treatment of Jews, opens by calling them “pueblo de perdiçión” (1a). 36 The first to make this assertion was Ig. González Llubera (xxix-xxx). It is echoed by Díaz-Mas (“Tema” 26-27), McGaha (Coat 283), and Girón-Negrón and Minervini (72). 98

the Christian Mardi Gras in its festive atmosphere and the custom of

wearing disguises. It was (and continues to be) the rule to eat (especially

sweets), to drink, to celebrate, and to exchange platters of delicacies . . . .

It was also traditional to give a gift of money . . . as well as clothing and

gold and silver objects. (Sephardim 22)

The comparison to Mardi Gras is apt because, although Purim dates to ancient times, the way that medieval Jews celebrated it was influenced by the Christian carnival. Díaz-Mas points out that the dates of each often coincide (“Tema” 26). McGaha says,

Jewish law regards Purim as a minor festival . . . but in the popular mind it

became a major celebration in medieval Europe, probably because of its

proximity to the Christian Carnival . . . .” (Coat 283)

Both seem to have derived from the ancient Roman Saturnalia so important to Bakhtin’s study of the carnivalesque: “We hold that it was from certain peculiarities of the

Saturnalia which lived on in the carnival that the stock of Purim customs was enlarged”

(Doniach 136). Thus, like Saturnalia, “Purim sees the temporary hierarchy of the jester, freedom of speech, the inversion of rank in the synagogue and tacit approval of gambling” (Doniach 137).

Although Purim is primarily dedicated to Esther, Joseph’s story was also celebrated:

El tema de José se consideró desde antiguo como tema purímico,

seguramente porque al fin y al cabo cuenta una historia de salvaciones

milagrosas tras azarosas peripecias: se salva José de diversos peligros (del 99

proyecto inicial de sus hermanos, que pretenden matarle; de morir

abandonado en el fondo de la cisterna; de la cárcel a la que le conduce la

calumnia de la mujer de Putifar; de la esclavitud, al fin, cuando logra

interpretar los sueños de Faraón) y se salvan los propios hermanos y su

padre Jacob de la hambruna de Israel, precisamente gracias a la ayuda y

protección de José, enaltecido como gobernador de Egipto. (Díaz-Mas,

“Tema” 27)37

The Joseph story shares with Purim the theme of liberation. Díaz-Mas and other scholars

(see note 36 above) explain why the Coplas de Yosef are included in the Purim festivities, but the question that remains is how this festive context influences the poem.

In other words, we know that the Coplas are a part of Purim, but is the opposite true?

A cursory reading of the poem does not seem to reveal much of the topsy-turvy world of the carnivalesque. It is, after all, a religious poem drawn from scriptural and midrashic sources. Nevertheless, a close reading, keeping in mind elements of Purim and of the carnivalesque in general, reveals a number of details that either refer to the festivities or take on special meanings within that context. Among these, I will examine the themes of laughter and pranks, feasting and wine, costumes, and the celebration of springtime fertility.

37 For discussion of the similarities between the Esther and Joseph stories, see LaCoque 9, 16-17, 40-41, 123, 126. 100

Bakhtin says that “carnival is the people’s second life, organized on the basis of laughter” (8). The same is true for Purim. In describing this festival, Jewish historian

Israel Abrahams says:

Men must laugh, and they laugh loudest at what interests them the most.

The more men’s minds are full of their faith, the more ready they are to

parody it and to get amusement out of it. To make sport of sacred things is

by no means identical with irreverence.” (383)

Monford Harris says, “Two basic elements make up Purim, dis-order and merriment.

They are intimately interrelated. The response to dis-order, which is life in exile, is merriment” (167). In the poem, when Joseph is about to reveal his identity to his brothers, he says:

Agora quiero fazer, oy en aqueste día,

con que tomen plazer aquesta judería:

yo les quiero tañer cantares de alegría

y les faré saver que es vivo Yosef. (209)

These words take on a double meaning: on the one hand, Joseph is revealing his plans.

On the other, “aqueste día” can be taken as the day of Purim, “aquesta judería” as the audience gathered to hear the poem, and “cantares de alegría” as the music that formed part of the festivities—or perhaps even as the poem itself! Indeed, as Girón-Negrón and

Minervini explain, the Coplas were likely a form of pseudo-theater in which the recitor would have acted out or at least gestured certain parts of the narrative (68). It is easy to

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imagine him reading these lines and extending his hand to the audience as an indication of their own involvement in the merriment described in them.

An element of this Purimic merriment was the general mischievousness temporarily permissible. Harris explains that even stealing from other Jews is allowed on

Purim, and pranks of all types abound (166). It is therefore not surprising that in this version of the story Joseph takes more than usual pleasure in the trials that he puts his brothers through before revealing his identity to them: “Gran plazer fazía en esto a

Yosef” (160d). After these prank-like trials, and after saying the above quoted lines about his plans to make merriment, Joseph plays one more trick on his brothers. First, he says that Joseph is still alive and well: “Pues queredes sin arte a Yosef vuestro ermano,/ parárvosle é delante, pues que es vivo y sano” (219ab). Then, he pretends to call out to

Joseph: “¡Yosef, color de flores, Yosef! . . ./ ¡Sal acá a estos ombres, que bien te an deseado!” (220ab). He then allows them to wait in comic suspense before finally declaring “Yo só Yosef vuestro ermano” (222b). Of this passage, Girón-Negrón and

Minervini say

Casi podemos imaginarnos al recitador purímico que se lleva a los labios

la mano ahuecada en forma de cuerno, mirando discretamente a la

audiencia con el rabo del ojo, como José a sus hermanos mientras invoca

su nombre. Y entre la burla final y su autorrevelación, el poeta recoge las

acciones subsecuentes en una exquisita recreación del mis-en-scene

narrativo” (Girón-Negrón 69).

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This emphasis on pranks reflects the permissiveness of the festival, which is itself a celebration of temporary freedom.

Another important element to this carnivalesque laughter is food and feasting, part of what Bakhtin calls “banquet imagery.” He says that “[f]easting is part of every folk merriment” (279). And so it is for Purim. N.S. Doniach points out: “In the Spanish ritual on the Sabbath before Purim the congregation recites Judah Halevi’s poem which begins:

‘Friends, come eat and drink till ye are drunk, fill Purim’s days with joy!’” (77). Of course wine is as much a part of the feasting as food, and actually came to be an essential element of Purimic festivities: “The Talmud . . . humorously says that a good Jew must drink wine on Purim until he can no longer distinguish between ‘Blessed be Mordecai’ and ‘Cursed be Haman’” (Abrahams 382).

In the Coplas, much is made of the feasting. Although most of the feasts are at least mentioned in some way in Genesis, the poem places special emphasis on them, as when Joseph commands that food be prepared for his brothers: “Quieras poner gallinas e capones” (130b), and “Saquedes pan abasto e mesa sea puesta” (147b). Given the festive context in which the Coplas were recited, any mention of food and drink would have struck a special chord and could have been understood to make reference to the feasting in which the audience was participating. Another example of such a Purimic allusion is the scene in which Joseph gives the positive interpretation of the butler’s dream, which carries a certain tongue-in-cheek humor given its references to wine. It reads: “Muy alegre soltava este sueño Yosef./ Dixo <<¡Faz alegría! ¡Non estés desmayado!” (44d-

45a). None of this festive “alegría” in connection to wine is present in the biblical version 103

of this scene: the corresponding passage from Genesis 40:12 simply reads: “Yosef said to him: This is its interpretation.” Its addition places special emphasis on the festive context.

Thus the poem reminds the audience of their own feasting, which is itself an escape from normal hardships.

Also essential to the festivities of carnival is the wearing of costumes. Bakhtin describes the most important part of a costume, the mask, as “the most complex theme of folk culture. The mask is connected with the joy of change and reincarnation, with gay relativity and with the merry negation of uniformity and similarity; it rejects conformity to oneself . . . . It contains the playful element of life” (39-40). LaCocque adds:

“Changing clothes also signals freedom from gloomy ideological assertions of unchangeability . . .” because it allows “the (former) slave [to ride] a horse [while] the

(former) prince walks on foot beside him” (13). Harris explains that in the case of Purim, this type of role reversal “is associated with gentiles” (169). In a society where Jews are persecuted by their neighbors, costumes and masks make it so that “Purim is the holiday when Jews become goyim and goyim become Jews” (Harris 164).38 As celebrated in the

Middle Ages, Purim was a time when “[t]hey laughed at their Rabbis, they wore grotesque masks, the men attired themselves in women’s clothes, and the women went clad as men” (Abrahams 261). All of this masquerading allowed a temporary escape from the trials of the quotidian, in which Christians, Jews, and Muslims were required by law to wear distinctive clothing (Nirenberg133).

38 This symbolic crossing over would have taken on greater significance during times of forced conversions and crypto-Judaism. 104

The theme of clothing is inherent in the Genesis story: Joseph’s coat is a symbol of his father’s preference for him, and losing it is a part of losing his freedom. His garment left in Potiphar’s wife’s hand condemns him to prison. When called from prison, he is dressed in preparation to meet Pharaoh. Because of their festival context, all of these details are emphasized in the Coplas. For example, when the king raises Joseph from slave/prisoner to vizier of Egypt, he dresses him accordingly:

Paños de sirgo le daba, fechos a maestría,

su caballo le daba, Yosef en él subía.

La gente lo miraba, tan bien les pareçía,

cada uno llamaba señor a Yosef. (68)

The Purimic audience would have been experiencing firsthand this same role-reversal through costumes in a temporary, carnivalesque setting. It is significant that it is Joseph’s appearance once so attired that leads the people to call him “señor.” His “costume” makes it so that when his brothers arrive in Egypt to buy bread, “non lo coneçieron tan apuesto andaba” (83b). Dressed in that way, Joseph becomes precisely what the Jews played at during Purim: “representatives of the dangerous outside world” (Harris 169).

Significantly, once the brothers become aware of Joseph’s masquerade, they are able to join it: “vestidos les dava que eran muy estraños” (241b). In a sense, they cross the boundary between literature and reality and join the audience in celebrating momentary freedom from the Jewish condition by dressing as the gentile Other.

The dates of Purim, 14 and 15 Adar, typically correspond to February or March on the Gregorian caldendar, and Doniach calls it a celebration of the “conquest of the 105

spring sun over the winter season” (45). As springtime festivals, both Purim and the

Christian carnival can be seen as celebrating life and fertility over death, and this motif is inherent in the Genesis account of Joseph: there is a contrast between famine and plenty, and Joseph experiences a type of calendar year as, like the sun, he must descend into the darkness of prison for part of his life in order to rise again and save the Israelites from starvation. The Coplas emphasize this symbolism of life and fertility in the figure of

Joseph.

His connection with springtime is made abundantly clear. The poem describes his appearance while a slave in Potiphar’s house: “Muy apuesto andaba como rosas e flores”

(26a). Flowers are the ultimate symbol of springtime fertility, and this description is a subtly erotic foreshadowing of Potiphar’s wife’s attempted seduction. Another example of Joseph’s connection to springtime is Benjamin’s description of Jacob’s mourning for

Joseph:

Desque el Dio del çielo levó a mi ermano

sienpre fizo duelo mi padre el cano,

está frío como yelo invierno y verano,

duerme en el suelo por coita de Yosef. (143)

The figurative eternal winter can only be broken by the life-giving sunshine of Joseph’s presence, because, as Benjamin explains in the next stanza, “Yosef non era feo más que el sol del verano” (144c).39 Significantly, the “flores y rosas” epithet used at the

39 Girón-Negrón and Minervini explain this somewhat difficult verse: “i.e. José era más hermoso [<>] que el sol del verano)” (60). 106

beginning is not repeated until after Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers, making it possible to reunite with his father (220a). Thus the calendar drama is carried out as spring is able to triumph over winter once again. This, combined with all of the Purimic elements in the Coplas, serves to reinforce the sense of hopefulness that permeates the festivities and allows the Jews to cope with the difficulties that they encountered in fourteenth-century Iberia.

The Coplas demonstrate an intriguing blend of characteristics. On the one hand, they are an appropriation of a traditionally Christian poetic form, but at the same time a modification of this form used to communicate undoubtedly Jewish themes. Yet, at the same time that they celebrate Jewish identity, they become a seamless part of a celebration that allows for a temporary reprieve from living that identity in hostile circumstances. This break from the usual order of things ultimately reaffirms that order, strengthening the boundary-maintaining mechanisms that prevent assimilation.

Suffering, Forgiveness, and Anti-Acculturation in the Poema de José

The anonymous Muslim Poema de José, like the Coplas, is a narrative poem in

Arabic aljamía that also dates to the fourteenth century while surviving only in later manuscripts.40 Like its Jewish counterpart, the Poema is written in a semiticized adaptation of the cuaderna vía. It combines the quranic account of Joseph with additional exegetical details, and the selection and presentation of those details is a reflection of the

40 The best discussion of the extant manuscripts, labeled A and B, is to be found in W. Johnson. See also McGaha 229 and Thompson 168. 107

historical circumstances in which the poem was produced and recited. After a brief discussion of this Muslim form of the cuaderna vía, I will analyze the themes of miscegenation, suffering, and forgiveness that serve as boundary-maintaining mechanisms for Muslim culture. Insufficient information is currently available to identify the specific context in which this poem was recited, but I will examine certain elements of orality in the work that contribute to the construction of ethnic identity.

The author of the Poema does not attempt to modify the cuaderna vía form per se in the same way that the Copla’s creator does. In fact, according to Billy Bussell

Thompson’s theory, the poem in its original form was a paragon of the genre:

Es puro ejemplo del mester de clerecía de los siglos XIII-XIV en su

lenguaje, en su regularidad métrica absoluta, y en especial en sus

hemistiquios formulaicos. No es obra de ningún imitador morisco de una

técnica de la poesía cristiana. La capacidad del poeta es de un practicante

muy dentro del sistema poético del mester del siglo XIII. En otras

palabras, no hay diferencia alguna entre el método de Alixandre, Apolonio,

etc.: es de la misma estirpe y del mismo repertorio. (170)

While agreeing that the original form likely conformed to the genre perfectly, I find his assertion that the poet is “ningún imitador . . . de una técnica” to be a little far-fetched because, after all, even the Christian poets had to learn the mester de clerecía through the imitation of models. McGaha’s recreation of the situation seems more probable:

It seems likely that the author of the [Poema]—probably the imam of a

rural Aragonese Muslim community of the late thirteenth or early 108

fourteenth century—saw this popular new literary form, with its appealing

stories of the miracles of the Virgin and the deeds of Christian saints and

heroes, as a threat to the faith of his flock. Just as the majority of

Christians no longer had access to the Latin sources of their faith, most

Spanish Muslims could no longer read Arabic. He therefore decided to use

this popular and influential literary genre created by Christian monks and

adapt it to his own Muslim purposes. (Coat 231-32)

In other words, the appropriation of the cuaderna vía is a form of boundary maintenance that indicates the fear of assimilation that was increasingly becoming a threat in the fourteenth century. A further indication of this fear is Thompson’s theory that later copies tend to sacrifice the meter and rhyme of the original in order to further Islamize the poem’s content: “los versos con palabras ‘religiosas’ . . . fueron cambiados del sistema cristiano al sistema árabe, destruyendo los versos regulares originales . . .” (167).

These boundary-maintaining mechanisms are due to the fact that, as it was for the

Jews, the fourteenth century was a calamitous time for the Muslims living in Christian

Spain. In fact, Nirenberg is of the opinion that “When interreligious violence did occur . .

. it involved Muslims and Christians more frequently than Jews” (34). This increased violence for Muslims is due to that fact that, as Nirenberg goes on to say, “Muslims were a conquered people, defeated in past battles of a war whose end was not yet in sight”

(140).

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In addition to the danger of violent encounters, the Mudejars41 were also threatened by the loss of identity through assimilation. Anwar Chejne says of them,

Their adjustment to the status of a subject people with the fresh memories

of their political, military, and intellectual ascendance was not easy. As

their hopes of regaining their pre-eminent role in the affairs of al-Andalus

became dimmer, they had to resign themselves. Although they enjoyed a

modicum of tolerance at first because of their number, skill, and know-

how, they became in the course of time the object of intolerance and

abuse. In the process and in spite of their bitter opposition and

disappointment, they became gradually romanized until they possessed

only vague memories of their past. (375)

María Luísa Ledesma Rubio adds:

[L]a convivencia, o coexistencia, con la población cristiana estuvo

siempre marcada por el signo de la inferioridad sarracena. Se trataba de un

pueblo, caso único en el mundo del Islam, que vivía en unas tierras sobre

las que no ejercía dominio político. Por otra parte, el resurgir en estos

siglos de la cultura occidental acentuaba aun más el peligro de

aculturización que amenazaba a estas minorías religiosas. (172)

41 Muslims living in Christian Spain are known as “Mudejars” (Spanish “mudéjares”) before the forced conversions of the sixteenth century, and “Moriscos” thereafter. The Poema was therefore originally composed by Mudejars, but survives in copies made by their Morisco descendents. 110

In arguing this idea of identity preservation through boundary-maintaining mechanisms, I am partially in agreement and partially in disagreement with Barletta’s contention that

specific language ideologies at work within the text do not necessarily

create a relation of opposition between Moriscos and Christians . . . , but

rather serve as symbolic tools employed by Castilian and Aragonese

alfakíes to regiment the cultural practice of their neighbors and legitimate

their position as purveyors of Islamic knowledge within these

communities. (154)

I agree that the Poema is a tool in the hands of the alfakíes, or religious leaders, for exercising some control over the community, but, while Barletta sees this as inconsistent with the construction of interreligious alterity, I would argue that the very

“regiment[ation of] cultural practice” is accomplished by creating a “relation of opposition between Moriscos and Christians.” He is referring to the fact that, as Chejne says, “Probably this literature was written by religious scholars and teachers whose aim was to keep alive the great traditions of Islam” (376). But, I would argue that this process of cultural and religious regimentation is impossible without the Other against which a community may define itself. As I cite in the introduction, “When someone feels that his language is despised, his religion ridiculed and his culture disparaged, he is likely to react by flaunting the signs of his difference” (Malouf 43). Thus, increased persecution against

Muslims had a similar effect as the rise of Protestantism would later have on Counter-

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Reformation Catholicism: an increased insistence on the markers of orthodoxy and difference.

A few discussions of aljamiado literature in general emphasize the use of this unique corpus of writings in the construction and preservation of identity. Cervera Fras says that “[L]a finalidad [de los escritos aljamiados] es asegurar la continuidad espiritual y la identidad islámica entre estos hispano-musulmanes contra la progresiva aculturación hispano-cristiana a que se veían abocados” (327-28). Then López-Morillas notes this form of cultural resistance in the distinctive language used in aljamiado texts:

[R]ather than finding the Moriscos’ language as debased as their economic

and cultural state, I see it as the one sign of their continuing vitality as a

people . . . Mudéjar and Morisco Spanish was in fact becoming actively

re-Semiticized, and specifically Islamicized, the better to serve the needs

of its speakers . . . [I]t certainly testifies to a strong sense of cultural and

religious identity. (195)

In the same way that the language of the Poema is Islamicized, the story itself undergoes the same process, as Chejne explains: “Arabic themes were carefully chosen to fit into the perspective, emotional needs, and temperament of the Moriscos. Those themes were often elaborated and embellished and given an Andalusian setting . . .” (378). Thus, like all of the versions analyzed in this study, the Poema de José fits into the context in which it was written and performed, and emphasizes the themes most important to those circumstances.

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One very obvious theme relevant to a group that fears assimilation is that of miscegenation. As Nirenberg explains, “The greatest amount of anxiety and violence” in medieval Spain

surrounded . . . sexual intercourse between members of different religious

groups. Of all borders between the communities, this was perhaps the

“hottest” both because of its ability to provoke blinding flashes of violence

and because its charge was most frequently tapped and put to work by

individuals through accusations at law. (128)

He goes on to explain that, for each of the three cultures of Spain, “[r]eligious identity was viewed as a ‘natural’ limit to sexual contact, as ‘natural’ as boundaries between the sexes, or between humans and animals. Such boundaries could be crossed, but not effaced” (142-43). While each group mainly guarded its members against female exogamy, “By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, references to the punishment of

Muslim and Jewish males on such charges [of sexual intercourse with a Christian woman] are a bureaucratic commonplace” (Nirenberg 132).

These religious and legal sanctions against interreligious sexual contact, and the commonplace of Christian accusations against minority men, would have shaped the reception of scenes in which Potiphar’s wife (Zaliha) attempts to seduce Joseph. This is evident in the way these scenes are presented:

C(i)riolo Zaliha; muy bien lo ovo c(i)riado,

Y de corazon lo ovo guardado;

Y el, como era apuesto, apagosele del, p(i)rivado. 113

Demandole el su cuerpo, y no le semejjo guisado. (B.73)42

This version doubles the taboo: not only is Zaliha’s advance a transgression of cultural

(not to mention marital) boundaries, but it is also incest-like in the fact that she raised him as a son. All of these prohibitions contribute to Joseph’s judgment that this situation is not “guisado,” an opinion likely shared by the audience given the fear of transgressing such boundaries between cultures.

Undaunted by this first refusal, she consults with her “privada,” who volunteers to hire an artist to paint erotic pictures of Zaliha and Joseph on the palace walls as a way to seduce him: “De Yuçuf y de Zaliha alli fizo sus feguras,/ Que se abraçaban danbos, p(i)rivados, sin mesura” (B.78.ab). This detail is unique among Spanish versions of the

Josephine story, and, possibly, among all versions.43 Its inclusion is highly significant:

Islam prohibits visual representations of the human body, so Zaliha’s paintings accentuate her status as a non-believer. This emphasizes the gravity of the transgression of boundaries that she is attempting. These images are mentioned again at the beginning of the most erotic stanzas, in which Joseph nearly succumbs to the temptation:

Por doquier que cataba, veia fegura artera.

Deziale Zaliha: “Esta es fiera manera.

Tu eres mi cativo, y voto, Sennor, çertera:

Yo no puedo pazer [(fazer)] que te guies a mi carrera.”

42 All citations from W. Johnson’s edition. The capital letter indicates which of the two manuscripts is cited, the number is the stanza number, and lower-case letters indicate lines within a stanza. 43 Thompson believes it is an echo of similar scenes in the Libro de Alixandre (169). 114

Yuçuf en aquella ora quisose encantar.

El pecado [(Satan)] lo fazia, que lo queria engannar (B.82.-B.83.ab)

Notice the juxtaposition of Joseph’s seeing the images and hearing Zaliha’s thinly veiled euphemisms for copulation (“que te guies a mi carrera”). This connection makes it clear that Joseph’s greatest danger is not so much adultery as miscegenation. It is therefore not surprising that this version does not include the detail of Joseph eventually marrying

Zaliha after coming to power, as the Leyenda de José does.

Although the legal context makes fear of punishment a main reason that Joseph’s predicament rings so familiar to a Muslim audience in medieval Spain, this is not the reason that he flees the situation. The poem says the he “vido que no era a su padre onrrar” (B.83.c).44 Joseph returns to the idea of family honor as his only words of defense when Zaliha falsely accuses him: “No viengo de tal morgon” (B.88.d).45 This sense of familial honor does not fit exactly with the dynamics of the time period. Nirenberg explains that in Spanish Muslim society

the competition for family honor was carried out (in part) through

emphasis on restrictions of female sexuality. The colonial context did not

create this emphasis, though it sharpened it by adding a level of

44 In the Qur’an the excuse he gives for resisting is “Isn’t [your husband] my master who has kindly sheltered me?” (12:23). 45 Johnson explains that “morgon” is “probably from mugron, in the sense of lineage” (73n). 115

competitive signification: interfaith adultery impugned the honor of the

Muslim community as well as of the woman’s family. (139)

The Poema therefore introduces the innovative idea that familial (and by extension

Muslim) honor can be compromised by any miscegenation, not just female exogamy.

This is a reflection of the fear of assimilation communicated throughout the poem.

There is also recognition in the poem that the price to be paid for this strict adherence to cultural boundaries is suffering, but that this suffering is noble. According to Esther M. Martínez, the scenes in which Joseph suffers “are all traditional and are milked for all the pathetic effect possible” (374). For example, his treatment at the hands of one of his brothers when Joseph asks for water: “Dio de mano al agua; en tierra la vazio./ De punnos y de cozes muy mal lo firio;/ El ninno con las sobras en tierra cayo”

(B.18.bcd). The entire episode is particularly heart wrenching. After the brothers sell

Joseph, he returns to bid farewell:

Fuese a los ermanos, la qadena rrast(a)rando.

Judas en aquella nojje los estaw velando;

Espertolos a todos muy a p(i)riesa, llorando.

Dixo: “Levantadvos, t(a)raidores, al tor(o)teado.” (A.43.)

The idea of being sold illegally into slavery was a familiar one to a mudejar audience in the fourteenth century. According to Nirenberg,

Muslims were a conquered people, defeated in past battles of a war whose

end was not yet in sight. All foreign Muslims were de bona guerra,

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enslavable upon capture, and native Mudejars, though protected by law,

could sometimes be enslaved illegally . . .” (140-41)

This possibility makes Joseph’s suffering especially relevant to the poem’s audience. His words at Rachel’s grave would have struck a particular chord: “Ellos me an vendido, no teniendoles tuerto” (B.48.a).

Joseph is not the only one who suffers, but also his father Jacob. Martínez points out, “Our author seems more interested in Jacob the suffering father, than in Jacob the patriarch and keeper of the covenant” (379). As in the Leyenda de José, Jacob finds out from the talking wolf that Joseph is still alive. The Poema, however, has him explain his inaction upon receiving this knowledge:

Dixxo Yagqub: “Fijjos, que tuerto me tenedes;

De cuanto me dezides, do todo me falleçedes.

En al Allah c(e)reyo y fijo, que aun lo veredes:

Todas estas cosas que aun lo pagaredes.” (B.32.)

The Muslim idea of submission to God helps to make sense of the suffering in the poem, and by extension, of the suffering in the Mudejar community. It provides a way of coping with adverse circumstances different from the carnivalization of the Coplas.

Related to the theme of suffering is the theme of forgiveness. While certainly a noble quality, this theme is used in the poem to emphasize a sense of group identity. In the scene cited above in which the captive Joseph returns to bid farewell to his brothers, he says

. . . “Ermanos, perdoneos el C(i)ridador; 117

Del tuerto que me tenedes, perdoneos el Sennor;

Que para sienp(e)re y nunca se parte el nuest(o)ro amor.”

Ab(a)raço a cada guna y partiose con dolor. (B.44.)

Impressive as his big-heartedness is, the poem emphasizes that this quality is result of the community to which he belongs. For example, a slave of the merchant who buys Joseph whips him for lingering at his mother’s grave. When a storm comes upon them as divine retribution, the slave confesses his action, and the merchant offers Joseph the opportunity for revenge. He responds:

. . . “Eso no es de mi a far.

Yo no vengo de aquellos que ansi se quieren vengar.

Ante vengo de aquellos que quieren perdonar.

Por g(a)ran que siya el yerro, yo ansi lo quiero far.” (B.56.)

In this passage, there is a contrast between “us” and “them” that could easily apply to the medieval Spanish context of the poet and listeners. That being the case, the message is that the Muslims have the moral high ground in contrast with the other groups.

Although it is impossible to pinpoint the precise context in which the Poema would have been recited, its focus on the more somber themes of miscegenation, suffering, and forgiveness make a Purim-like festive context improbable. It is, however, highly oral in nature, indicating a likely ritualistic role in actively connecting the past and the present. According to Barletta,

[t]he Poema de Yuçuf forges a strong link not only between the discourse

of the Qur’an and storytelling activities within Morisco communities, but 118

also between the historical time of the recounted events—a time in which

God performed miracles for those who were faithful to Him—and the

lived “now” inhabited by members of Morisco communities. (148)

I argue that this linking of past and present contributes to the sense of religious identity, which in turn functions as a boundary-maintaining mechanism. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the opening stanzas, characterized by their decidedly oral nature and sense of community. After the conventional invocation of Allah, the poem reads:

G(a)ran yes el su poder; todo el mundo abarqa;

Non sa le enqobre cosa que en el mundo naçqa;

Siquiere en la m[a]r ni en toda la comarna [(comarca)],

Nien la tierra p(i)rieta ni en la b(a)lanqa. (A.2.)

Notice the movement from the global to the local (“mundo” . . . “comarca”) that signals to the listeners that the messages communicated in the poem are to be applied at the community level. This prepares them to understand the relevance of past events, as, in the following stanza, the poet addresses the audience directly: “Fagovos a saber—oyades, mis amados—/ Lo que conteçio en los tienpos pasados” (A.3.ab).

Significantly, the next direct reference to the audience occurs at almost the exact middle point of the extant narration. It serves to sum up the themes of suffering and submission to God that have been reiterated so often up to that moment in the poem. It is the scene in which Joseph leaves prison, signaling an end to his suffering:

Y en el portal de la p(e)resion fizo fazer un esc(i)ribto:

“La p(e)resion es fuesa de las obr(e)res vivos, 119

Y sitio de maldiçion; y vengo de los abismos.

Allah nos cure dello a todos los amigos.” (B.143.)

Johnson points out that this description “is an addition of the author,” and therefore unique to this version (110). As the audience hears of the end of Joseph’s trials, they are reminded of their own, so “nos . . . los amigos” can be read as the Mudejars, in much the same way that “esta judería” can refer to the audience in festive context of the Coplas.

The result is a sense of solidarity between sufferers past and present that reinforces the feeling of ethno-religious identity.

Both the Coplas de Yosef and the Poema de José are products of minority groups living during calamitous times. Each, through a process of acculturation, appropriates a normally Christian poetic form, the cuaderna vía, as a way to make available their respective religious traditions in much the same way that Christian poets did. At the same time, both incorporate boundary-maintaining mechanisms as a way to filter out other, more threatening cultural aspects that could lead to assimilation. The difference is in the specific mechanisms employed: the Coplas are part of a joyful, carnivalesque mockery of assimilation, while the Poema participates in more somber discourse of martyr-like suffering. As we shall see in following chapters, after the Muslim and Jewish populations are eventually expelled from the peninsula, these dynamics will change. Instead of seeking boundary maintenance as their ancestor’s did, the Jews and Muslims converted to

Christianity will seek for the dissolution of the boundaries set by Old Christians.

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Chapter 3: The Search for a More Inclusive National Identity in Sixteenth-Century

Drama

I believe that theatre and performance can articulate a common future, one that's more

just and equitable, one in which we can all participate more equally, with more chances

to live fully and contribute to the making of culture. I'd like to argue that such desire to

be part of the intense present of performance offers us, if not expressly political then

usefully emotional, expressions of what utopia might feel like. (Dolan 455-56)

As discussed previously, the Spanish middle ages were characterized by the sometimes cooperative, sometimes violent coexistence of Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

In such an environment, the Joseph story became a locus for the processes of acculturation and boundary maintenance. The expulsion of the Jews in 1492, followed by the forced conversions of Muslims in subsequent decades, reduced the possibility of cross-cultural pollination and significantly disrupted notions of religious identity. These changes are reflected in the theatrical versions of the Josephine tale that emerged during this period.

Several traditional accounts of sixteenth-century theater have failed to take into account or have minimized the importance of the new complexities in identity formation caused by the expulsions. Manuel Cañete, writing in 1885 with a particularly nationalistic and pro-Catholic bias, contrasts the “impureza” of other European theatrical traditions with his assertion that “En España, por el contrario, el poeta dramático se inspiraba 121

principalmente en los libros que la Iglesia católica recibe como canónicos” (150-53). In this way he rejects the possibility of Jewish or Muslim influence in Spanish literary culture. J.P. Wickersham Crawford’s 1922 work focuses largely on stylistic issues in early drama, as do the 1967 studies by Francisco Ruiz Ramón and Bruce Wardropper, although more mention is made of Jewish influences in Ruiz Ramón’s work.

Since the 1961 publication of Americo Castro’s seminal De la edad conflictiva, increasing attention has been paid to the still multicultural environment of post-expulsion

Spain. Castro explains,

Decidido el conflicto entre las tres creencias con la victoria de una de ellas

sobre las otras dos, la vida subsiguiente de los españoles conservaría en

los usos y tendencias de su ser interior (en sus preferencias, en sus

acciones y en sus inacciones) evidentísimos testimonios de su pasado, de

sus grandezas y de sus caídas. (Edad 61)

This preservation of elements that the three cultures of medieval Spain had once interchanged through the process of acculturation is very apparent in the theatrical versions of the Joseph story written from the sixteenth century on. But, while the relative fixity of ethnic identity helped to facilitate this cultural exchange in the middle ages, sixteenth-century Spanish society had something of an identity crisis:

once the coexistence of the three castes which had made possible the

Christian hegemony was broken up and forgotten, once the collaboration

of the Moors and Jews was suppressed—the Old Christians, deprived of

common tasks, were paralyzed. (Castro, The Spaniards 49) 122

The ultimatum for Jews and Muslims to convert or leave the peninsula removed a clearly defined Other against which the Christians could construct their identity. The solution was to designate a new Other, the converso:

La casta suprema se adentraba en su conciencia de serlo; pero como no

estaba sola, ni la dejaban sentirse sola aquellos condenados cristianos

nuevos, surgió el drama en torno al problema de si se era o no se era

cristiano viejo . . .” (Castro, Edad 31)

Castro goes on to assert that “El caos moral y económico producido por tales procedimientos ha de incorporarse a nuestra idea de la situación de los españoles en el siglo XVI” (Edad 82). This new obsession with who was or was not an Old Christian is certainly fundamental to the understanding of the Joseph plays of the period.

Other scholars have followed Castro’s ideas and elaborated upon them. Historian

Jerome Friedman describes the situation in the following way:

Before the turn of the sixteenth century there were still hundreds of

thousands of Jews and even worse, an even greater number of crypto-Jews

who lived like New Christians. Worst of all, this confusing situation had

been created by the Christian populace itself. Many people suspicious of

Marranos, no doubt quite shocked to learn that holy water was less

powerful than they had believed, looked back with nostalgia to the good

old days when Christians were Christians and Jews were Jews and

everyone knew their place. (11)

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He argues that out of this context sprang a new conception of Jewishness more focused on lineage than creed. Without the traditional boundaries that allowed everyone to know

“their place,” Spanish society constructed a new binary between Old Christians and New

Christians. As New Christians fully adopted their new faith and intermarried with Old

Christians, they now became indistinguishable in belief, clothing, and language. This necessitated the invention of biological distinctions that supposedly could not be shaken by conversion or the dilution of Jewish blood (26). The result is a new kind of prejudice:

[B]y the sixteenth century antisemitism had undergone an important

change. It had transcended traditional medieval anti-Judaism towards a

growing identification of Jewishness as a biological fate and infection,

both physiologically and spiritually, to be cut out of society rather than

incorporated into it. This form of antisemitism may have had medieval

roots but would lay the foundation for modern racial hatred of Jews which

would also demand the elimination of both perverted Jewish blood as well

as retrograde Jewish ideas. (27)

The comparative literature expert Ania Loomba follows Friedman in this line of thinking. She discusses the anxiety caused by the possibility of religious conversion: “If the faithful constitute a permeable and changeable body, then the purity of both the original body and those who are allowed to join it is always suspect” (209). This is why she also believes that “sixteenth-century Spain . . . engendered modern racism” (208).

Like Friedman, she notes the Spanish need for a discourse of biological difference in the absence of other distinguishing features: 124

In the case of Jews and Muslims religious difference is expressed in moral

and often in physical terms. While circumcision certainly is a crucial and

recurrent sign, these discourses also construct more indelible marks of

difference. Thus Jewish men are said to menstruate, smell, be capable of

breast-feeding or have hooked noses; blackness, mis-shapenness and

grotesque features, including swollen heads and hooked noses, are

routinely attributed to many Muslims. This is not to minimize the

enormous anxiety produced by the physical similarities between Jews,

Christians and Muslims, but to show that such anxiety results in a

strenuous production of a discourse of difference. (208)

Andrew Herskovits, whose theory of the converso perspective I will review later in this chapter, concurs with the idea that early modern racism was a social construct: “If the question is asked as to who was a Jew in the Spanish Golden Age, the answer may have to be that a Jew was someone who was identified and perceived by his society as a

Jew” (“Judaization” 55). He adds that this binary between Old and New Christians was fundamental to the construction of national identity: “being Spanish was defined by demonstrably not being Jewish” (“Towards” 252).

The sixteenth century is, therefore, a formative time for Spanish society and culture. Medieval convivencia disappeared, but remnants of its exchange survived, often as cultural palimpsests. The tendency towards boundary maintenance described in previous chapters certainly survived into the Renaissance, but had to be adapted to new circumstances by constructing new Others. The discourses that emerged were a new type 125

of anti-Semiticism, this time based on race instead of religion, and a new national identity that, unlike Alfonso el Sabio’s more inclusive vision, excluded all but Old Christians.

Two theatrical versions of the Joseph story emerged in this context: Micael de Carvajal’s

Tragedia Josephina and the anonymous Desposorios de José. Both of these plays subvert the incipient discourse of national identity and propose a more inclusive version of what it means to be a Spaniard. Then, in the early seventeenth century, the father of Spanish national theater, Lope de Vega, appropriates this converso perspective and, while emptying it of much of its Semitic character, takes advantage of its potential for social criticism.

Unity in the Tragedia Josephina

Critics have debated the literary merit of Micael de Carvajal’s Tragedia Josephina for the past century, but only recently has much attention been paid to the multicultural dynamics at work in it. Carvajal, like many playwrights and intellectuals of his time, was likely a descendant of conversos. Regardless of the dramatist’s precise lineage, I argue that the Tragedia subverts the Old Christian discourse of Spanish identity by proposing the equality of all Christians, Old and New. He does this by evoking the Eucharist— celebrated in the Corpus Christi festival that the play formed part of—and its equalizing power.

Carvajal (c. 1500-c. 1575) was born in the Extremaduran town of Plasencia, headquarters for a diocese and a cultural center. Miguel Ángel Pérez Priego explains:

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[S]ería precisamente al amparo de aquellas instituciones que dominaban la

sociedad placentina—la iglesia, los colegios, las familias nobiliarias o el

propio municipio—como la ciudad desarrollase una intensa actividad

literaria en el cultivo de uno de los géneros de mayor atractivo y

proyección popular. Tal ocurrió con el teatro y los espectáculos

dramáticos, que convirtieron a Plasencia en el foco teatral más vigoroso de

toda Extremadura y uno de los más animados de toda la España

renacentista. (114)46

Somewhat less is known about Carvajal’s own creative development, although his biography is gradually taking form. The first scholar to study Carvajal and his work,

Manuel Cañete, speculates that he was both a nobleman and a member of the clergy, but admits that “hasta hoy no he logrado encontrar noticia segura concerniente á la vida y circunstancias del inspirado poeta” (116). Joseph E. Gillet is able to be more precise, identifying the playwright as the son of Hernando de Carvajal and Isabel de Almaraz, the husband of Teresa Núñez de Almaraz, and the father of Rufina de Carvajal and several illegitimate children. In contrast with Cañete, Gillet affirms, “it is now certain that

[Carvajal] did not take orders, even late in life” (Carvajal xi). After examining certain legal records documenting Carvajal’s financial transactions, Gillet is able to conclude

[T]here stands now revealed to us, still shadowy but far more definite than

before, the figure of a Carvajal answering more nearly to the picture which

46 The connection between the Plasencia’s institutions and its theatrical activity is also commented in Cañete 141; Teijeiro Fuentes 43-44; and López Sánchez-Mora 25. 127

many readers of the Josephina must have formed of him: a man of strong

passions, a profligate and wastrel, but yet, it would seem, a lovable son; a

scholar and an artist, but, above all, a man who, in all probability, had

lived intensely and in broad contact with life. (Carvajal xv)47

It is David Gitlitz who makes the most extensive investigation into Carvajal’s genealogy. In a 1972 article, he argues that Carvajal’s converso background is very probable, but affirms “it is evident that whether or not Carvajal was a converso, his drama deliberately concerns itself with the converso world through constant linguistic and allegorical references” (“Conversos” 260-61). Two years later, Gitlitz published another article revealing the results of a closer scrutiny of Carvajal’s family background, arguing that he was indeed a converso in the sense that he descended from branches in the Carvajal family tree that were “‘contaminadas’ de mala sangre” (“La actitud” 148).

As I will argue shortly, Carvajal’s Tragedia Josephina reveals a converso attitude.

Although Carvajal in the dedication to the Tragedia refers to “mis obras” and implies that they are as many as the “hojas de Sibilla,” modern scholarship is only able to attribute two works to him: Las cortes de la muerte and the Tragedia Josephina (Carvajal

1). The latter was extremely popular throughout the sixteenth century, having gone through at least four editions between 1535 and 1546 (McGaha, Story 18). Even though it appears to have been banned by the Inquisition in 1559 for its depiction of dream interpretation, it was popular enough with the people of Plasencia that their cabildo made

47 A good review of Carvajal’s known biographical information is to be found in Teijeiro Fuentes 308. 128

a special request to the Holy Office to allow its performance in 1599 (Pérez Priego 120).

Given its problems with the Inquisition, as well as its experimental, five-act structure, the

Tragedia fell into oblivion during the next century’s deluge of theatrical activity based on more fixed theatrical genres. 48

After Fernando Wolf rediscovered the play in 1852, Manuel Cañete published a critical edition of it accompanied by an introductory study in 1870, and his critical judgment of the work, influenced by his Romantic enthusiasm for the sixteenth century, is overwhelmingly positive. He contrasts the play with works from the following century by asking rhetorically “¿Hay en el famoso y popularísimo Teatro español del siglo XVII una sola comedia profana donde las pasiones que agitan al corazón del hombre estén puestas en relieve con más verdad y naturalidad que en la tragedia Josefina . . .?” (173).

Like many critics who follow him, he dwells particularly on the masterful soliloquy of

Potiphar’s wife (Zenobia): “ningún otro poeta español ha retratado con más verdad las tempestades que suscita en femeniles pechos la vehemencia de un liviano apetito” (127).

A later editor of the play, Joseph Gillet, is more critical in his aesthetic assessment: “[T]he play seems to us ill-constructed, unevenly-balanced, burdened with

Senecan rhetoric . . . . [T]he sense of dramatic architecture was weak, or non-existent, in our dramatist” (Carvajal liii). But, like Cañete, he admires the depiction of Zenobia:

“[T]he play . . . owes its transcending value mainly to the creation of Zenobia. Outside of

48 The sixteenth century in general was a time of flux in the Spanish theater. The Tragedia fails to fit the seventeenth century’s definition of either the comedia, a mix of comedy and tragedy in three acts, or the auto sacramental, a one-act allegorical play on the Eucharist. 129

the Celestina there had not yet appeared in Spanish literature a woman of flesh and blood.

Zenobia, however, lives” (Carvajal lvi).

The above critical evaluations were apparently sufficient that literary historians began to include the Tragedia in their accounts of the development of Spanish theater, and they tend to echo Gillet’s judgment that while the play’s structure is flawed, the figure of Zenobia redeems the work. Wickersham Crawford, for example, says

The tempo of the play is slow and measured—too measured, one may

say—and the figures are all hewn out of the same block—Joseph, his

scheming brethren, Jacob, and Putifar—until Zenobia appears, at which

the audience must have rubbed its eyes and suddenly become attentive and

thoughtful . . . . (51)

Ruiz Ramón echoes that idea: “La obra, pese a sus defectos de construcción, tiene emoción—cosa que no encontramos en muchas piezas de la época—y nervio dramático”

(103). Teijeiro Fuentes explains these structural defects as “una tentativa frustrada de llevar a escena la esencia de la tragedia clásica” (312).

Likely the reason for the negativity of these evaluations is the critics’ failure to take into account the fact that in the sixteenth century, as Wardropper puts it, “Estamos todavía en presencia del género inestable y vacilante de la época prelopesca” (212). More contemporary scholars recognize that an early sixteenth-century play cannot be judged next to the generic fixity of the seventeenth century, and tend to focus instead on the

Tragedia’s innovation. Melveena McKendrick, for example, says that the Tragedia “is unique in that it is a five-act play on a religious theme written for public performance and 130

shows all the unconcern for unity of time and place of the popular religious drama” (40).

Pérez Priego sees it as “una interesante y novedosa fórmula teatral para su época” (119).

Alfredo Hermenegildo goes so far as to say that the Tragedia is “el mejor drama religioso de la primera mitad del siglo [dieciséis]” (121).

As this brief review demonstrates, Tragedia criticism has come full circle and returned to the kind of positive view held over a hundred years ago by Cañete. The difference is that while Cañete’s views are influenced by his nineteenth-century nostalgia for sixteenth-century imperial glory, more recent scholarship is open to viewing the play within the multicultural context as described in the introduction to this chapter. The most influential study in this direction is Gitlitz’s “Conversos and the Fusion of Worlds in

Micael de Carvajal’s Tragedia Josephina.” He makes a convincing argument that the play must be read in context:

Aside from its considerable artistic merit and its recognized place in

literary history, the Tragedia Josephina deserves consideration as an

example of the studied juxtaposition of several worlds: the characters are

at once Joseph and his brothers, Jesus and the Jews responsible for his

crucifixion, and the old- and new-Christians of the world of Carvajal. The

play cannot be wholly understood without taking into consideration the

converso background of the early sixteenth century. (Gitlitz 261)

I agree with this assessment entirely, although my own analysis takes a somewhat different approach to the issue. While Gitlitz reads the play as an example of the sort of open anti-Semitism common to conversos who hoped to hide their own family trees, I 131

argue that the Tragedia in fact subverts the notion of blood purity. In this I am in closer agreement with Michael McGaha, who asks the rhetorical question, “What literary analogue could better illustrate the harm done by envy to the Spanish Jews and their descendants, the conversos, than the story of Joseph and his brothers?” (Story 20). He rightly argues that the Tragedia is an example of the “Spanish theater that might have been—a theater teaching lessons on justice and tolerance for diversity . . .” (Story 23).

While I agree with and will seek to expand upon McGaha’s conclusion, he does not take into account a very important connection between the poetic versions of the Joseph story that I studied in the previous chapter and the Tragedia: the equalizing function of the festival context.

Carvajal’s hometown of Plasencia, according to Cañete, was particularly famous for its Corpus Christi festival:

El esplendor con que la Ciudad y Cabildo eclesiástico de Plasencia

celebraban de muy antiguo la fiesta del Corpus, desahogando su

entusiasmo por la Institución Eucarística en alegres danzas, en autos,

comedias y representaciones dentro y fuera del templo, era tan grande que

se había hecho notorio en toda España. (136)

The Tragedia Josephina, as one of its prologues states, is taken from “la sacra hystoria para esta santa fiesta del Corpus Christi” (7). It goes on to reiterate the connection between the play and the festival: “es materia que en figura contiene la causa que oy causa esta sancta fiesta . . . . [L]a intencion del auctor es ornar la sancta fiesta y a ninguno injuriar mas contentar a todos a lo menos a los sabios y buenos . . .” (7). The play, 132

therefore, formed part of the Corpus Christi celebration in much the way that the Coplas de Yosef reflect the Purimic festivities (see the previous chapter). As Teijero Fuentes puts it, “Carvajal ha recreado una historia sagrada que al mismo tiempo le permitiera, en su concepción más profunda, adecuarla a los festejos que tenían lugar con motivo de la celebración del Corpus (338).

A number of scholars have noted Eucharistic symbolism in the play that demonstrates its integration into the festival. Marcel Bataillon, for example, says,

“Carvajal deja claramente traslucir que la historia de José vendido por sus hermanos prefigura el sacrificio de Cristo vendido por Judas” (188). Ruiz Ramón notes “la identificación simbólica José-Cristo Salvador” throughout the work (103). Gitlitz explains, “The allusions to the cordero, repeated in subsequent passages, together with the emphasis on Joseph’s innocence, purity, and perfection, and the statement that he is a portrait of divinity, assure us that Carvajal is talking about Christ” (264). He adds that

“Joseph’s passion was his mistreatment by his brothers, his symbolic death his being thrown into the well, and his resurrection his rising from the well” (268). Pérez Priego, while noting that the play is not as thoroughly allegorical as later autos sacramentales, says that it “no deja de insinuar una cierta intencionalidad figurativa y un simbolismo eucarísticos” (119).

This symbolism is important because, as the Catholic Encyclopedia says, “The first and principal effect of the Holy Eucharist is union with Christ by love.” It goes on to say that

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The immediate result of this union with Christ by love is the bond of

charity existing between the faithful themselves . . . . And so the

Communion of Saints is not merely an ideal union by faith and grace, but

an eminently real union, mysteriously constituted, maintained, and

guaranteed by partaking in common of one and the same Christ. (Pohle)

If unity with Christ and the faithful is the primary purpose of the Eucharist, the Corpus

Christi festival that is meant to celebrate it took on other purposes in early modern Spain.

As Wardropper explains,

La exaltación y la pompa religiosas de la procesión al aire libre

contribuyeron a arraigar el Corpus Christi, más hondamente que las demás

fiestas eclesiásticas, en el corazón del pueblo español . . . . Como si fuera

una fiesta nacional, más que universal, pronto adquirió en España rasgos

típicos. (41-42)

With the threat of Semitic “impurity” at home and Protestant heterodoxy abroad, Spain converted the Corpus festivities into a celebration of a castiza, Old Christian version of national identity. Its entertainment, therefore, had a tendency to turn universal conflicts between good and evil into local conflicts of Christians and the Semitic or heretical

Other. For example, Francis George Very describes a Corpus Christi dance performed in

Madrid that “consisted of a mimic combat of the devils, represented by the men dressed as Moors, and the angels, which ended with the decapitation of Mohammed by St.

Michael” (21). Herskovits cites Alan K.G. Paterson as saying that in theatrical performances, 134

Desde una perspectiva doctrinal, Judaísmo representa a los que están

excluídos del misterio eucarístico y privados de los beneficios de la

salvación. Desde una perspectiva social, Judaísmo representa a la otra

comunidad en el Madrid austríaco, la clandestina, a los judaizantes que

hacían sus negocios en los patios del Alcázar y solicitaban permiso para

ejercer legalmente sus profesiones en Madrid. (Positive 19)

My argument is that Carvajal’s Tragedia Josephina rejects this divisive, Old

Christian version of national identity and instead promotes the theological emphasis on the unity of all Christians, regardless of their background, made possible through the

Eucharist. As Gitlitz explains in his study of Las cortes de la muerte, it was a common tendency among conversos to take advantage of Corpus Christi’s Eucharistic theme because “en el momento de recibir la comunión, todo cristiano, nuevo o viejo, es igual a los demás cristianos” (Gitlitz, “La actitud” 149). Carvajal emphasizes this, like Alfonso el Sabio, by incorporating narrative details from the Muslim and Jewish traditions into a basically Christian framework. In a similar manner as in the General estoria, the

Tragedia’s manipulation of sources from each of the three religions represents an inclusive, albeit Christianizing, vision of national identity. He also works from a converso perspective that mocks the Old Christian emphasis on lineage and instead promotes virtue as the source of real honor. To demonstrate this, I will first analyze the

Muslim and Jewish influences and how they are incorporated into the play. Then I will discuss the converso perspective as revealed by the playwright’s criticism of anti- intellectualism and his use of ironic language. 135

Manuel López Sánchez-Mora, in his history of Plasencia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notes the precise location of that town’s morería during those centuries and adds, “tenemos que confesar que no es escaso ni pobre el recuerdo auténtico que nos dejaron los musulmanes de sus actividades en Plasencia” (16-17). That

Carvajal might have had contact with the Muslim community is therefore at least possible, and that that community’s Josephine tradition influenced his work is very evident. Cañete, in his pro-Catholic enthusiasm, denies any such influence: “Carvajal se atiene á la historia de José tal como se cuenta en los capítulos XXXVII al L del Génesis, desentendiéndose por completo de la tradición koránica” (152-53). Starting with Gillet, however, scholars have pointed out the numerous Muslim echoes in the Tragedia. Gillet, for example, points out Joseph’s visit to Rachel’s tomb on his way to Egypt, the Muslim emphasis on Joseph’s beauty, the detailed attention given to the seduction scenes, and the possibility that an earlier and now lost version of the play may have included Zenobia’s reliance on a privada (Carvajal xl). Hermenegildo summarizes this argument (125), as does Teijeiro Fuentes (331). Interestingly, the latter points out a few details that he believes are specifically not shared between the Poema de José and the Tragedia, such as

Jacob’s apprehension about sending Joseph to check on his brothers, the talking wolf, the cruelty of the slave-driver on the way to Egypt, and Joseph’s insistence on Zenobia’s confession before agreeing to leave prison. This leads him to conclude that “ambas historias no sólo discrepan en algunos incidentes fundamentales, sino también en su concepción más general” (330).

136

I believe that the issue requires far greater attention than the cataloguing of a few superficial similarities or dissimilarities between the Tragedia and Muslim tradition. On the one hand, there are more Muslim influences in the play than are immediately apparent. On the other hand, the process by which Carvajal manipulates and incorporates these details reveals his vision of the place of the Moriscos in Spanish identity.

In many cases, the allusion to the Muslim tradition is faint or placed in a different context so as to defamiliarize it. For example, in the Tragedia the brothers celebrate

Joseph’s hitting the bottom of the well:

gad. vistes el golpe que dio

alla dentro en el fondon

le. ora esta mi coraçon

mas contento que se vio (797-800)49

This dialogue has no counterpart in the book of Genesis, which indicates that it instead alludes to this scene from the Poema de José:

Ejjaronlo en el pozo con cuerda muy larga.

Y cuando fue a medio ovieronlo cortada.

Y cayo ent(e)re una penna y una piedra airada,

Y quiso Allah del çielo que no le noçio nada. (B.34)

49 All citations from the Tragedia come from Gillet’s edition. I will cite the body of the play by line number, and the prologues by page number. 137

The reference to Joseph’s hitting the bottom of the well can make sense on its own, but those familiar with the Poema are likely to understand its significance differently than those who are not.

Another related example is the reference to Joseph’s unusually heavy weight when the brothers pull him out of the well:

dan. Pareceme que esta muerto

segun pesa este rapaz

ysachar tu alla te haz

porque salga por concierto (873-76)

To an audience unfamiliar with the Muslim tradition, this statement merely serves as comic relief. An exegetical detail that made its way into the roughly contemporary

Morisco Leyenda de José, however, makes clear why Joseph would weigh so much: “y

[Mālik]-anšentolo en-el pešo i hallo ke pešaba ku(w)at(o)ro kintaleš. i(y)-era la ora Yusuf de katorze annoš, maš era šu pešo dell-annūbu’a [prophecy]” (30). Once again, the context is entirely different: while in the Leyenda Joseph is being weighed at the time of his sale to pharaoh, in the play he is being pulled from the well. Only those familiar with

Muslim tradition could have picked up on this allusion and understood that Joseph is weighed down by prophecy. Other similar passing allusions to the Muslim tradition include Joseph’s farewell to his family (Carvajal 1057-62, Poema A.41), Zenobia’s concern for her reputation with the ladies of the city (Carvajal 1892-901, Poema B.89), and Potiphar’s adoption of Joseph (Carvajal 2058-59, Poema B.64). All of these Muslim allusions contribute to the dramatic interest without causing the play to stray substantially 138

from the biblical version. They also provide a sense of familiarity to any recently converted Moriscos in the audience who may have grown up listening to the Poema de

José or other Muslim versions of the story.

These allusions function as more than just a nod to the Morisco community, however. As noted above, one of the details that Teijeiro Fuentes lists as absent from the

Tragedia is the Muslim idea that Jacob speaks with a talking wolf, who denies having eaten Joseph (see Leyenda 15; Poema A.31). While this detail is indeed absent, Carvajal appears to have at least been aware of it. Although Jacob does not address the wolf personally, he does address it in apostrophe:

O fiera perra maluada

que a mi hijo assi tragaste

di porque no te acordaste

de su lindeza estremada

y en joya tan agraciada

como pudieron tus dientes

hallarse tan diligentes

di cruel desatinada. (1369-76)

Later, Jacob asks his sons to take him to the wolf:

lleuadme hijos alla

a topar con essa fiera .

Que avnque tan braua aya estado

en matar a mi heredero 139

ya la sangre del cordero

le aura del todo amansado (1711-16)

This is an example of a Muslim detail that has been “Christianized.” Carvajal borrows the motif of the wolf, but turns Jacob’s conversation with it into a more dramatic monologue.

The playwright replaces the Muslim miracle of a talking animal with an allusion to the

Christian miracle of the Eucharist, in which even a “fiera” can be tamed by “la sangre del cordero.” While Moriscos would likely recognize the allusion, they would also recognize that the playwright is converting it to a more Christian world-view. Another example of this is the brothers’ description of Joseph to the caravan:

ju. que juro al dio verdadero

en el moço no ay vicio

el es fiel en su seruicio

y muy discreto a mi ver

as. y tal que podeys creer

no vos hara maleficio. (963-68)

These assertions contradict the scenes in Muslim versions, in which the brothers speak poorly of him in the same context: “dišši(y)eron eloš: tomadlo por lo ke kerre’iš dar, k’en-el ay kondisi(y)oneš. diššo el merkader: ¿i ke šon šuš kondisi(y)oneš akelas ke ti(y)ene? diši(y)eron: eš lad(o)ron i mint(o)rošo” (Leyenda 18). The reason that this change in attitude represents a form of Christianization has to do with the inter-religious rivalry concerning Joseph’s price. As I explain in the introduction, Christian exegetes had long argued that Joseph was in fact sold for thirty pieces of silver, the same price for 140

which Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus. Muslims, on the other hand, insist that the price was twenty pieces of silver, as stated in Genesis, based on the tradition that Muhammad once exclaimed “¡ke parato fu(w)e bendido ll’anabī [(prophet)] d’Allā Yusūf” (Leyenda 19).

Thus, while Muslims use the brothers’ lack of salesmanship to explain how low the price was, Carvajal inverts this characteristic in order to explain why the price is higher. In fact, Carvajal has the merchant offer twenty to begin with, and dedicates fifty-five lines to the haggling that leads to a final agreement on thirty! (969-1024). This emphasis on both the brothers’ attitude in selling Joseph and the amount that they received for him is part of a conscious effort to Christianize Muslim tradition. The implication, as in the

General estoria, is that while the Moriscos are welcome to form part of Spanish society, it is ultimately Christian doctrine that unites Spaniards. Any elements of Moorish culture that continue in Spain must be subordinated to Christian purposes.

The play’s relationship with Judaism is somewhat more complex. Identifiable

Jewish details are relatively rare in the text, possibly because they might have been more familiar to Inquisition officials. The few allusions to Jewish tradition are fairly obscure and innocuous. For example, one of Simeon’s complaints against Joseph at the beginning is that “de vn crimen pessimo y malo / nos quiso ogaño arguyr” (183-84). The play itself contains no further information as to what specific crime he had accused them of, but

Jewish midrash offers a number of explanations. Rashi explains that he accused them of eating the limbs of live animals, mistreating the sons of concubines, and committing various sexual perversions (37:2). Thus, a full understanding of Simeon’s comment requires some background in Jewish tradition. Another example of Jewish influence is 141

Judah’s bellicose attitude before Joseph reveals his identity: “mueran mueran quantos son

/ y abrassemos el lugar” (3699-700). This echoes Judah’s similar threats in the Coplas de

Yosef: “onbres de esta çivdad de nós serán matados” (184b). There is also the common

Jewish motif of Joseph putting straw in the river to alert other nations that there is bread in Egypt (2983-90). As with most of the Muslim influences, these are only faint allusions that would have made sense to those familiar with Jewish exegetical tradition and do not fundamentally change the biblical storyline.

Far more important than any direct influence from Jewish versions of the story is the general judeo-converso perspective that permeates the play. This perspective, as

Herskovits describes it, “may be summed up as individualism (strong belief in the dignity, liberty, and equality of individuals), heterodoxy (a theologically and socially critical attitude), and double language (ambiguous communication)” (“Towards” 257).

The sense of individualism and equality, as I discussed above, is part of the emphasis on the Eucharist celebrated during Corpus Christi and is apparent in the play. In the analysis that follows, I will first discuss Carvajal’s socially critical attitude in the work, mainly exemplified by his disgust with anti-intellectualism. Then I will examine some instances of ambiguous communication, primarily irony, in the play.

Américo Castro discusses at length the tendency towards anti-intellectualism in sixteenth-century Spain. He says:

No quisieron [los cristianos viejos] empañar su honra castiza cultivando

tareas intelectuales y técnicas, consideradas nefandas desde fines del siglo

142

XV, por ser propias (por ser juzgadas propias) de las castas hispano-

hebrea e hispano-morisca. (Edad 16)

He adds that as a result of this association of intellectualism with conversos,

La cultura intelectual . . . acabó por hacerse síntoma e indicio de no

pertenecer a la casta electa y heroica, a la de la hombría radical. Y fue

fatal repercusión de tal hecho el que—poco a poco primero, y paso de

carga más tarde—la gente huyera de practicar todo menester que implicase

sabiduría y ejercicio intelectual.” (Edad 31)

According to McGaha, Carvajal’s “defense of the intellectual life, and of the value of literature, in his profoundly anti-intellectual society is especially poignant”

(Story 20). This is particularly evident in the dedication that precedes the play. He describes his intent as

no passar la vida en silencio como las bestias que naturaleza formo

inclinadas a obedecer a la sensualidad y apetito del vientre quise dexar

alguna cosa texida de mis manos . . . por diferenciarme de los brutos como

tengo dicho: de la qual causa muchas vezes no puede mi coraçon retener

sus lagrimas: viendo quantos buenos ingenios aparejados para produzir

fructos tan excelentes y suaues que gran prouecho en la humana vida

pudiesse[n] exerir. Mas ay de mi que los veo tan enfrascados en tantos

linajes y diuersidades de vicios que no tienen memoria de letras . . . . (3)

Here Carvajal sharply criticizes the tendency to shun intellectual activity: by saying that his own creative pursuits distance him from animals, he is implying that Old Christian 143

anti-intellectualism is bestial. He laments to see so many hide their own intelligence because of concerns over “linajes y diuersidades de vicios.” He goes on to explain that

‘poco aprouecha leer las vidas del filosopho Plutarco si el tiempo se gasta en detratar de las vidas agenas y la tuya es incorregible y desenfrenada” (4). This can be read as a criticism of the emphasis placed on determining the public honor and blood purity of others rather than on private virtue. He then extols the many benefits of intellectual activity: “dandose a las letras y buenas artes el alma recibe salud: el cuerpo autoridad: y la vida honestidad y hermoso adornamiento de la fama y honra y excelentes virtudes” (5).

While the prevailing Old Christian sense of honor was connected to descending from the warrior caste, Carvajal connects “fama” and “honra” to virtue and the arts.

The playwright’s representative within the work is a figure named Faraute who addresses the audience before each act. His opening speech continues the scathing criticism of anti-intellectualism begun in the dedication, this time in a more comedic and entertaining style. He begins by quoting a line in Latin, then ribbing the audience for not understanding: “perdonen vuestras mercedes que en verdad no me acordaua que todos soys tan sabidos que ninguno sabe latin” (6). He then goes on to criticize the chivalry novels that celebrated the warrior attributes so valued by the Old Christians:

en verdad que el señor auctor dessea mucho complazer a vuestras

mercedes para lo qual se ha desuelado: y a trastornado a Amadis con la

demanda del sancto Grial de pe a pa por remembrar oy algo que sin

perjuyzio fuesse: y no halla sino casos atroces de muertes: armas campos

144

rebueltas peleas golpes espadas tan estrañas que por ventura en la tal

representacion el corrimiento passado agora sea correncia. (6-7)

This metatheatrical reference to the creative process highlights a criticism of popular literature of the time by noting the impossibility of finding in it material appropriate for presentation. Instead, according to Faraute, “el auctor oy se ha buelto a sus treze: y ha sacado de la sacra hystoria para esta santa fiesta del Corpus Christi vna tragedia llamada

Josephina” (7). The phrase “se ha buelto a sus treze” may very well be an allusion to

Maimonides’ thirteen principles of faith, two of which refer to the divine origin and immutability of the Torah. In that case Carvajal is implying that Jewish learning points to the Bible, which in turn points to the mystery of the Eucharist. According to

Hermenegildo, in the play “se observa la vuelta a las fuentes y el retorno a la pureza bíblica tan característicos de los intelectuales cristianos nuevos” (127). Chivalry novels, on the other hand, while celebrating Old Christian warrior values, contain material inconsistent with Christian theology. In the play itself there is another positive reference to Jewish learning in the mouth of the butler while he is in prison with Joseph:

Pues toda sciencia y saber

los judios alcançays

y la ventaja lleuays

en secretos conocer (2520-23)

Most references to Judaism, however, appear to be negative. This leads Gitlitz to believe that “the Tragedia Josephina on the whole presents the Jews unfavorably” (260).

145

He bases this conclusion largely on an analysis of the use of the terms “dios” and “el dio” to refer to God in the play:

Carvajal carefully and consistently differentiates between the term el dió

and dios in this play. Though all of the characters are pre-Christian Jews,

Carvajal divides them into malicious Jews and virtuous Jews by use of a

semantic difference relevant only to his own time. For him some of the

Jews in this play are really proto-Christians, who thus use the Christian

‘plural’ term for God; the malicious Jews are those who will one day

reject Christianity, and who will use the Spanish Jewish/converso

‘singular’ term for God. (Gitlitz 263)

Hermenegildo concurs, saying that the play “tiene el aspecto típico de ser el reflejo de la actitud propia de los conversos que despreciaban, de forma injuriosa . . . a los que habían permanecido fieles a la ley mosaica” (128). I believe, however, that, given the ambiguous language that forms part of the converso perspective of the play, the sincerity of the unfavorable presentation of the Jews is not to be entirely trusted.

Carvajal illustrates the unreliability of language in an otherwise superfluous moment in the Tragedia. After the brothers return to Egypt bringing Benjamin, Joseph has his servant put his cup into Benjamin’s grain sack. He then sends for his captain of the guard. The captain, while on his way to meet Joseph, grumbles

o descreo o reniego

siempre con tanto llamar

si con tanto militar 146

nos vaga seguir el juego (3595-98)

Once he sees Joseph, however, his tone changes dramatically:

Que manda tu señoria

gran señor adelantado

ay algo que en este estado

nos cumpla hazer oy dia

que si lo ay tu bien confia

y estos no son dichos vanos

que si ay do poner las manos

se hara sin mas porfia. (3599-606)

The dramatic irony lies in the fact the audience knows very well that the captain, having only just complained about “tanto llamar,” now exuberantly affirms his willingness to follow orders. His assurance that “estos no son dichos vanos” is in fact the opposite of the truth.

Keeping in mind the unreliability of words illustrated here, it becomes reasonable to assume a certain irony in Carvajal’s anti-Semitism.50 This irony generally serves to accentuate the irony of a society that can celebrate biblical Jewish figures while persecuting their descendants. Faraute’s opening monologue again illustrates this paradox. He is apparently dressed in Jewish clothing as he says,

50 That the Jews themselves were not overly offended by the anti-Semitic statements in the play is evidenced by the fact that an aljamiado version of the play has been found to have circulated in the Sephardic community in Egypt! (Gutwirth 387). 147

creo me conoceys porque algunos me parece que se alegran y otros se

alborotan que sera? mas que sera ha ha ha ya ya ya vos entiendo: oyd

señores que gente tan sentida sabed que muchos se quexan: porque

siempre en estos trances se entremete traje y gente de Judea: y a mi

parecer tienen razon que para en verano no son sanas tantas capirotadas

aunque los que se sienten ajos han comido en ellas. (6)

Gitlitz explains this passage in the following way:

As Gillet points out, this is a “clumsy pun on capirotas-Jews with

‘capirotes’ or ‘caperuzas’, and capirotada-aderezo hecho con hierbas,

huevos, ‘ajos’, y otros adherentes . . . (Acad.),” but he does not attempt to

show the relation between the proverb about garlic and the pun. It would

seem that Faraute is saying that many people in the audience know about

these Jewish hats (which if the proverb is relevant must be the “ajos”)

because they have personal experience in the matter of Jewish hats (“han

comido en ellas”). It is understandable how a converso audience might be

“alborotado” watching an Old Testament play. (269-70)

While I agree with Gitlitz’s interpretation of the pun’s relevance and his observation about the audience’s squeamishness, I want to also point out the irony of the passage: by taunting the audience for feeling uncomfortable about seeing Jewish clothing in a biblical play, Faraute is pointing out the connection between Old Testament Jews and the conversos in the community. One of these Old Testament Jews, Joseph, is held by

Christian belief to be a model of virtue and a type of Christ. The irony, then, is that in 148

Spanish Old Christian thinking those Jews who lived long before Christ can be paragons of Christianity, while contemporary Jews must live in constant fear and dissimulation even if they have sincerely converted to Christianity.

Understanding this connection between Old Testament Jews and conversos in order to point out their difference in treatment helps to contextualize many of the apparently anti-Jewish statements in Faraute’s soliloquies. For example, at the beginning of the second act he comments on Jacob’s lengthy planctus for the supposed death of

Joseph, saying “Nunca pense que jamas acabara este planto de Jacob y de alli les viene que todos sus descendientes son lloraduelos” (73). Although apparently an anti-Semitic jab, once again a connection is made between a respected Old Testament figure and the contemporary image of the Jew. What makes it ironic is the inconsistency between the sympathy elicited by Jacob’s lament and the laughter elicited by attributing Jacob’s same characteristics to his descendents. At the beginning of the fourth act Faraute promises that in this act “no vereys xergas: lutos: llantos: sino plazeres: gozos: alegrias . . . .” But then he warns: “avnque tratando con gente de judea no puede dexar de auer alguna mescla de defendimiento de mano: por ser como sabeys reboltosa: achacosa y amiga de poner las cosas a riesgo” (119). Once again, Faraute connects the Old Testament characters to the contemporary image of the Jew with the phrase “como sabeys.” Yet the character in the act whose behavior could be described as “reboltosa” and risky is the hero Joseph, who puts his brothers through several trials before revealing his identity. Even while apparently insulting the Jews, Carvajal is associating them with a positive figure. Finally, at the beginning of the fifth act, after commenting on the audience’s silence, Faraute says, 149

“señal es que soys amigos de ver trajes y gentes de judea” (154). In other words, Spanish society’s fascination with Joseph and other Old Testament characters should translate into a higher esteem for their contemporary descendents.

This irony is also apparent in the anti-Jewish comments that appear in the main body of the play. It is evident in the fact that the same pride in pure lineage that defines the Old Christians also characterizes the family of Israel, suggesting that the Israelites’ descendents should have claim to the same honor as the Old Christians. For example, after Joseph is sold into captivity, he complains, “vn visnieto de abrahan / en cadenas y en dolor” (1175-76). This reflects the converso attitude from previous centuries described by Castro:

en los siglos XIV y XV los hispanos-hebreos se sentían <

natura>>, por haber sido su linaje planeado por Dios, con paternidad

espiritual atestiguada por la misma palabra divina. ¿Qué mayor nobleza

que la de los hijos de Israel, de Abraham?, decía en el siglo XV Juan de

Lucena, amigo del Marqués Santillana. (Edad 45)

Joseph’s dismay that someone with that lineage would fall into captivity also reflects a certain outrage that contemporary conversos must fall victims to persecution.

Another scene in which the idea of lineage is treated ironically is the interaction between Joseph and Zenobia. The latter refers to Joseph as “un jodihuelo” (2046), which

Hermenegildo sees as evidence of “un cierto desprecio de los judíos” on Carvajal’s part

(128). The problem with Hermenegildo’s argument is that he confuses the playwright’s attitude with the character’s attitude. Zenobia is both idolatrous and adulterous, so neither 150

the author nor the audience is likely to identify with her or sympathize with her views.

Thus, when Carvajal puts in the mouth of a villainous character descriptions of Joseph that echo prevailing Old Christian attitudes about the Jews, such as “circunciso jodiguelo

/ el y todos sus parientes” (2388-89), and “de hombre de tan mala casta / que se puede pensar del” (2394-95), he is in fact vilifying those attitudes. In contrast, Joseph’s own statements on lineage during the same scenes reflect a very different attitude. Shortly after Zenobia first refers to him as “jodihuelo,” Joseph says to her, referring to his sister that they are discussing,

Tu merced sepa vna cosa

que de la sangre do viene

por mayor dote se tiene

ser honesta que hermosa (2096-99)

Shortly thereafter, while in prison, he introduces himself to his fellow prisoners by saying,

. . . hebreo soy de chanaan

de la casa de abrahan

desciendo por linea reta

enemigo de la seta

gentilica sin desman (2515-19)

This is the more privileged attitude because the hero expresses it. The message is that

Jews have honor because of their lineage, but that honor is tied to virtue (“ser honesta”) and orthodoxy (“enemigo de la seta gentilica”). 151

The chorus at the end of the third act summarizes the converso attitude discussed above:

Que trabucos da este mundo

que baybenes y que saltos

ya los baxos vemos altos

ya los altos en profundo

mas yo sobre esto me fundo

que virtud a todo trance

siempre da mate y alcance

con rostro libre jocundo. (2999-3006)

The irony of a society that honors Jews in the Bible and vituperates them in their own community gives the sense of a world upside-down. The solution, according to Carvajal, is to judge people by their virtue rather than their lineage, thereby viewing all humans as part of the universal “linage humana” mentioned at one point by Jacob (1560). This reconciliation of Old and New Christians, according to Carvajal, can be accomplished through the unifying power of the Eucharist.

The Marriage of Peoples in Los desposorios de José

Far less critical attention has been paid to another sixteenth-century Joseph play,

El aucto de los desposorios de José, than to the Tragedia Josephina. This anonymous one- act play is, however, a complex and exceptional work that stands out from the other plays included with it in the Códice de autos viejos. The plot for Desposorios is drawn from a 152

late classical Hellenistic Jewish novel and adapted to a sixteenth-century Spanish audience. Gitlitz’s above cited statement about the Tragedia also holds true for

Desposorios: “The play cannot be wholly understood without taking into consideration the converso background of the early sixteenth century” (Gitlitz 261). In fact, the converso attitude defined by Herskovits that is apparent in Carvajal’s work also manifests itself in Desposorios, although in somewhat different ways.

Desposorios appears to have been extremely popular during the latter part of the sixteenth century and into the beginning of the seventeenth. Its earliest known performance was in Seville in 1575, and, according Léo Rouanet,

It must have enjoyed a lengthy public favor because, thirty-three years

later, it was again among the number of spectacles given in Madrid for the

Corpus Christi celebration. The celebrated autor de comedias Alonso

Riquelme being engaged, in 1608, to present on this day two autos

sacramentales, chose La niñez de Cristo and Los casamientos de Joseph.

(180)51

Despite its obvious importance during the Golden Age, the play has received very little attention from recent scholarship. Those few critics who do mention it in some way tend to comment on its exceptional nature among the other plays published with it in the

Códice. For instance, McGaha says, “Unlike most of the other plays in the manuscript . . .

, Joseph’s Wedding is a lively and fast-paced play with considerable dramatic interest”

51 Many thanks to Dayna Patterson for the English translations of Rouanet’s original French. Citations of Rouanet himself come from the fourth volume of his Colección, while quotes from Desposorios and El finamiento de Jacob come from the first volume. 153

(The Story 87). Desposorios also seems to be somewhat exceptional in its use of the conventional Bobo, because, according to Pérez Priego,

se advierte [en el Códice] un notable aligeramiento de los elementos

jocosos y hasta procaces que allí tantas veces aparecían mezclados con lo

sagrado y que este teatro dogmático de la segunda mitad ya no parece

estar dispuesto a soportar. (“Teatro” 283)

Finally, Pérez Priego describes the collection as a whole saying,

El cuerpo dramático . . . desarrolla una acción de ordinario inspirada en

una fábula dada, que procede la mayoría de las veces de la Biblia o de la

hagiografía y excepcionalmente de los apócrifos o de otras leyendas

piadosas. (“Teatro” 282)

He then mentions in a footnote that Desposorios is one of these few exceptional works not drawn from the Bible.

Desposorios is indeed not based on any scriptural account of Joseph, as Pérez

Priego observes, but rather on the first half of a Hellenistic Jewish novel known conventionally to scholars of late classical antiquity as Joseph and Aseneth (often abbreviated as JosAs). The basic storyline, which the Spanish play follows very faithfully, focuses on the romance between Joseph and Aseneth, and explains how it was possible for Joseph to marry a non-Israelite. It takes place in the house of Potiphar in

Heliopolis after Joseph has become the vizier of Egypt. Potiphar’s daughter, Aseneth is portrayed as a perfectly chaste virgin devoted to the Egyptian gods. When Potiphar receives word that Joseph is coming to visit his household, he mentions to Aseneth that 154

he would like to marry her to Joseph. She rejects the idea but, upon seeing Joseph through the window, falls in love with him. When she goes to greet him, he refuses to allow her to touch or kiss him because of her idolatry. Seeing her disappointment, he blesses her and promises to return in a week. After Joseph leaves, Aseneth rejects her idols and goes into mourning for her sins. An angel then appears to her, tells her that she will marry Joseph, and gives her heavenly honeycomb to eat. Because of her conversion, she is now able to marry Joseph when he returns.52

Although this is not the place for an exhaustive review of late classical scholarship concerning the provenance and purpose of this ancient novel, it is important to make note of the general scholarly consensus on issues relevant to my analysis of its sixteenth-century avatar.53 Sara Raup Johnson lists three things that most experts generally agree on concerning JosAs: first, that it “is Jewish, not Christian.” Second, that

“the provenance is almost certainly Egypt.” And third, that “the date of composition must lie somewhere between 100 B.C.E. and 115-35 C.E.” (108). Each of these conclusions bears some relevance to the converso perspective inherent in the later Spanish adaptation of the work.

Concerning the work’s Jewish origins, John J. Collins explains, “Joseph and

Aseneth belongs to [the] world of Hellenized Judaism” (127). This is because, according

52 For C. Burchard’s English translation of the entire novel, see Joseph and Aseneth. The medieval historian Vincent of Beauvais also included this portion of the novel in his Speculum Historiale. The rest of the original novel recounts Pharaoh’s son’s attempt to steal Aseneth from Joseph and the subsequent Egyptian civil war, in which certain of Joseph’s brothers take opposing sides. 53 For more thorough scholarly reviews, see Collins 115 and Bolyki 82-83. 155

to János Bolyki, “the ethical attitudes in JosAsen are typically Hellenistic Jewish and not

Christian” (83). This detail is important because it means that Desposorios comes from a source far closer to contemporary Judaism and the converso situation than the more ancient and accepted biblical texts that the majority of Christian religious plays from the period were based on. For example, there is another play on the Joseph theme included in the same Códice as Desposorios entitled El finamiento de Jacob. This play borrows its plot from the Genesis account almost exactly and reflects almost nothing of modern

Judaism.

The fact that JosAs likely originated in the Jewish community in Egypt further confirms its relevance to the situation of conversos of post-expulsion Spain. This is because of the parallels between the situation of Hellenistic Jews in Egypt and the

Hispanic Jews in Spain. In each case Jews are a minority group living outside of Israel and in danger of assimilation. Bolyki lists three elements of the Egyptian context that are apparent in JosAs: First, that “life in the Jewish Diaspora was threatened” (90, italics in original). As I have discussed previously in this and other chapters, the Spanish Jews had passed through calamitous times throughout the fifteenth century, and conversos, even sincere ones, continued to serve as a foil to Old Christian national identity in the sixteenth century. Second, Bolyki points out the “religious character and “missionary or proselyte- reassuring purpose of the novel” (91). The status of converts was one of the most pressing issues of the sixteenth century. Finally, Bolyki notes the “ancestral myth of a

Jewish settlement in Egypt” to justify their presence there (91). Spanish Jews had their own ancestral myth about their presence in Spain drawn from a reference to Sefarad in 156

the book of Obadiah. The following statement by Bolyki about the Hellenistic Jews also holds true for Spanish Jewry: “we must realize that the thought-world of the Jewish

Diaspora of Egypt was not so much dominated by the Old Testament ‘Exodus motif’, the desire to be delivered from Egypt, as rather the purpose of ensuring the right to live there” (95-96).

S. Johnson argues that these elements of the Hellenistic Jewish position in Egypt are important in understanding the purpose of JosAs: “Like other Jewish fictions, it reshapes traditions about the Jewish past in order to redefine the identity of one segment of the changing Diaspora community” (120). My argument is that Desposorios has the same function in Spanish society. This new vision of Spanish identity is, as in the

Tragedia, racially mixed but theologically Christian. In fact JosAs was preserved and appropriated by Christians from at least the fourth century on (Joseph and Aseneth 196).

Collins says, “The Christian copyists already found much that was congenial to their interests in the tale,” including the issue of conversion (127). He adds, speaking of Jewish

Old Testament-themed literature in general, that the late classical Christians “made the relevance of these stories explicit by inserting references to Christ” (113). Many of these works were in fact not known in rabbinic Judaism (Collins 113).

Joseph and Aseneth, then, provides ideal source material for a play intended to communicate the converso perspective of the sixteenth century. It is entirely Jewish in its original form and worldview, and reflects the concerns of a Diaspora community. But it is also a “convert” of sorts in that Christians adopted it and adapted it to their purposes. In other words, the story’s textual history contains the same elements as the converso 157

identity. This makes it seem likely that the author of Desposorios was himself a converso clergyman or educated professional who came across JosAs in his studies and used to it to address the identity issues that he faced in his day. Although lack of information presently makes this idea mere speculation, an analysis of the play confirms the converso perspective that one would expect to be inscribed upon an already appropriately converso story. Such a perspective is possible regardless of whether or not the playwright had

Jewish descent because, as Herskovits explains: “this perspective is not indicative of a converso identity, as the perspective was not exclusive to the conversos: it soon came to be shared by liberal cristianos viejos” (“Towards” 256).

As I explained previously, the converso perspective consists of three elements:

“individualism (strong belief in the dignity, liberty, and equality of individuals), heterodoxy (a theologically and socially critical attitude), and double language

(ambiguous communication)” (Herskovits, “Towards” 257). As in the Tragedia, the sense of equality is manifest in Desposorios’s celebration of the Eucharist, but the latter play also emphasizes the sacrament of marriage as a symbol of the ideal union between Old and New Christians. The Tragedia’s social criticism is directed against anti- intellectualism, while Desposorios criticizes the loose morality of court ladies. Finally, while the Tragedia’s double language is in the form of irony, in Desposorios there is an ambiguity of language in the use of the conventional Bobo character.

Like the Tragedia, Desposorios formed part of the Corpus Christi festivities and therefore celebrates the Eucharist. McGaha says that “there is some slight reference to the

Eucharist in Joseph’s Wedding . . . but the play is obviously not centered around the 158

theme of the Eucharist” (The Story 88). I believe, however, that the Eucharistic symbolism is more than just “some slight reference” and that, combined with the symbolic marriage of Joseph and Aseneth, it fulfils the same Christianizing and equalizing function that it does in the Tragedia.

Although JosAs is fundamentally Jewish in origin and perspective, it already contains material that, if read with Christian eyes, can be interpreted as alluding to the

Eucharist. For example, when the angel visits and eats with Aseneth, he says:

Behold, you have eaten the bread of life and have been anointed with holy

chrism, and from today on your flesh will be renewed, and your bones will

be healed, and your strength will never wane, and youth will not see old

age, and your beauty will never decay, and you will be like unto a City

built for all those fleeing to the name of God the Almighty King of the

ages. (Beauvais 458)

The promise of eternal life as a result of “the bread of life” would have thoroughly

Eucharistic meaning in a Christian context, and the author of Desposorios follows his source here closely:

Comen los ángeles desto

y el que desto comera

jamas nunca morira.

Asenec, come tu aquesto,

pues en gracia se te da.

Oy haze por ti Dios tanto 159

que te da su pan de vida;

en su crisma heres unjida,

y en su olio sacrosantto

desde oy heres rredemida. (551-60)

It is noteworthy that the Spanish adaptation of this passage is Christianized by the use of such vocabulary as “gracia,” “sacrosantto,” and “rredemida” while preserving the already

Christian phrase “pan de vida.” The result is an obvious allusion to the mystery of the

Eucharist being celebrated in Corpus Christi, which, as explained above, appealed to conversos because of its power as an equalizer of Old and New Christians. Bolyki explains that “Aseneth is the prototype of the Gentile-turned-Jewish proselytes” in JosAs

(90). In Desposorios, on the other hand, she appears as the prototype of the Jew turned

New Christian who through penitence has earned equality with the Old Christians. Note the angel’s words to Aseneth:

Bienaventurada fuiste,

pues a tus dioses dejaste,

y su culto rrenegaste,

y mi palabra creyste

y tal penitençia obraste.

Y tanbien seran dichosos

quantos mi Dios serviran

y penitençia haran . . . . (536-43)

160

The use of the verb “rrenegaste” echoes the term “renegado,” which was commonly, and often pejoratively, used at the time to refer to those who had changed religion.54 Its use here as a cause for blessing is an attempt to remove the stigma attached to conversion.

Aseneth’s prototypical nature is indicated in the quintilla beginning with the inclusive “Y tanbien . . .,” where service to God and penitence are listed as the qualifications for

Christianity without any mention of lineage.

This sense of equality through Christianity without regards to race is reinforced by the play’s emphasis on another sacrament, marriage. In addition to the work’s title, the introductory Loa explains that marriage is to be the play’s main theme:

Casole [a Joseph] Dios por su mano

con denunçiaçion divina,

qu’es ejenplo y mediçina

de qualquiera qu’es cristiano

y en tal camino camina. (36-40)

Here the language is again very inclusive (“qualquiera qu’es cristiano”) and emphasizes action (“en tal camino camina”) over genealogy, which continues in the next quintilla:

Notareis la perficion

de vida quanto le aplaze

a Dios; y es lo que hace,

dandole su galardon,

[a] aquel que le satisfaze. (41-45, italics mine)

54 For a famous example, see the Captive’s discussion of renegados in the Quijote (328). 161

The connection between marriage and equality is certainly inherent in JosAs, as

Bolyki explains:

[A]n important punch line of the ancient author is that converted Gentiles

should have equal rights with ethnically born Jews in the Jewish

community. Consequently, it is clear that the marriage of Joseph and

Aseneth was no mere academic or abstract theological question for either

the ancient author or his readers, but a daily and practical problem. (87)

The issue is reformulated in Desposorios in order to argue that converted Jews should have equal rights with the Old Christians. According to Loomba, interethnic marriage was a compelling topic for the early modern stage. The fact that in this play the prototypical convert is a woman is significant because, as Loomba explains,

More often than not . . . the converted Moor on the Renaissance stage is a

woman. We have the recurrent spectacle of a fair maid of an alien faith

and ethnicity romanced by a European, married to him, and converted to

Christianity. Her story, unlike those of converted men, does not usually

end in tragedy, nor does it focus on the tensions of cultural crossings.

Whereas converted men must remain single or be destroyed, her religious

turning is also a romantic turning to a Christian husband. Instead of a self-

fashioning, hers is a re-fashioning by her Christian husband. Unlike the

Moorish man, she does not represent a fearful alterity to Christendom but

the possibility of a controlled exchange. (Loomba 213)

162

Although this passage focuses on the crossing between Islam and Christianity, the dynamics of Jewish-Christian relationships are similar enough for the purposes of this essay. As Herskovits explains, “as the Jew cannot appear on stage and the woman does, the woman could be used as a symbol for the Jew” (Positive 100). Thus, while portraying a male conversion on stage would have been problematic, the cultural milieu makes a female the ideal prototype for conversion and marriage the ideal symbol of the union between Old and New Christians. An analysis of the theme of marriage in Desposorios reveals this symbolism.

The idea that marriage is an equalizer is introduced early in the play, when

Potiphar tells Aseneth that he wants to marry her to Joseph, and she rejects the idea by saying:

Con un cautivo extranjero

me quieren a mi ygualar?

Tal se avie de ymaginar! (186-88, italics mine)

Her rejection proves ironic because, from the perspective of the audience, she is the

“extranjero” unworthy of marriage to Joseph, which the latter makes clear at their first meeting when she tries to greet him with a kiss:

Quien a Dios vivo a de honrrar

gusta pan de bendiçion

y caliz de yncorrupçion,

y a muger no a de tocar

estraña de su naçion. 163

Las que con sus bocas dan

beso a ydolos perdidos,

y sordos, y enmudesçidos,

y a sus mesas comen pan,

(y) aun no toquen mis vestidos. (296-305)

Collins’ statement concerning this moment in JosAs only partly holds true for

Desposorios as well: “Joseph’s initial objection even to kissing Aseneth . . . is formulated in religious rather than ethnic terms . . .” (Collins 120). The author of Desposorios adds to the list of practices that Joseph objects to the statement that she is “estraña de su naçion,” thereby echoing her own previous objections to him and voicing the exclusively Old

Christian version of Spanish national identity. This prepares the audience to see that a divine miracle is the only solution to their intransigence. Aseneth voices this idea:

No esta de graçias terrestres

mi afiçion afiçionada,

que, muy mas que enamorada,

por ynfluençias çelestes

esta mi alma abrasada. (446-50)

Burchard’s observation on this romance-conversion phenomenon in JosAs also applies to

Desposorios:

since the target of her emotions is Joseph, the son of God, her story

gradually assumes a religious complexion. Pride becomes a symbol for

pagan enmity against God, and passion the sudden desire to be accepted 164

by him aroused by a meeting with a true follower of God. (Joseph and

Aseneth 189)

Yet, since in the Spanish version Joseph also cites ethnic difference as a barrier between them, the implication is that both Old Christians and the Jews are guilty of this pride and have need of redemption.

The angel’s visit to Aseneth is the central and defining moment of the play, and it is the angel who declares that Aseneth’s penitence has nullified any barrier to her marriage with Joseph:

Dende oy pan de yncorruçion

ciertamente comeras,

caliz santo beveras;

con olio de bediçion

y crisma unjida seras.

Seras de Joseph esposa;

de oy mas tu nombre esçelente

sera rrefujio a la gente,

por penitençia preçiosa

que hiziste santamente . . . . (496-505)

Here the angel’s description of Aseneth’s religious practices echoes some of the same phrases that Joseph used above to describe his own: “pan de incorruçion” and “caliz santo” (compared with Joseph’s “pan de bendiçion” and “caliz de yncorrupçion”). These

Eucharistic elements make possible the marriage (“Seras de Joseph esposa”). It is evident 165

that this marriage represents a broader union of peoples in the angel’s declaration that “tu nombre esçelente/ sera rrefujio a la gente.”

In order for this union to be complete, however, Joseph, and the Old Christians that he represents, must accept that religious unity erases ethnic difference. After his return to Potiphar’s house, Aseneth explains to him that their marriage:

de Dios me a sido otorgado

porque a mis dioses negue

y a vuestro Dios me allegue:

sea de vos açeptado,

pues lo meresçe mi fee. (636-40)

To which Joseph responds:

Pues que por rrevelaçion

se denunçio aquesta cosa,

yo, con voluntad goçosa,

os rreçibo en santa union

por mi muger y esposa. (641-45)

The message, then, is that if Joseph can recognize that conversion can remove the barriers between Israel and Egypt, then Old Christians should recognize the possibility of a union between Old and New Christians through the equalizing power of the Eucharist.

As explained above, the Old Christians had come to celebrate Corpus Christi as more of a nationalistic celebration of their own exclusive version of national identity. The author of the Desposorios subverts this tendency not only by bringing the focus back to 166

the unifying power of the Eucharist, but also by insinuating that the union of conversos and Old Christians ought to be the true cause for celebration. He does this by having

Pharaoh order a celebration of the symbolic wedding of Aseneth and Joseph that sounds strikingly like the Corpus Christi celebration of which the play formed part:

Desde oy se publicaran

siete dias festivales:

no labren los oficiales,

y todos acudiran

a mis vanquetes rreales;

y el que mejor ynvinçion

en las fiestas sacara,

se le gratificara,

sin faltalle galardon

a la que tal no sera.

A mi costo mando y rruego

hagan mill coheterias,

luminarias, alegrias:

suenen ynstrumentos luego

y toquen la chririmias. (771-85)

If the wedding of Joseph and Aseneth represents the formation of a new Spanish national identity inclusive of both Old and New Christians united by the sacraments, then their

167

wedding party represents the Corpus Christi festival as a celebration of that new national identity.55

The second element of the converso perspective, as defined by Herskovits, is heterodoxy, including social critique. In Desposorios, this social critique is related to the theme of virtue over lineage and is directed against the loose morals of the court ladies.

McGaha refers to this criticism as a “reinforcement of conservative morality—what would nowadays be termed ‘family values’ . . .” (The Story 89). Be that as it may, the contrast between the immorality of the ladies and the chastity of Aseneth serves to accentuate the converso idea that personal virtue is more important than lineage. Much of the criticism is to be found in Potiphar and Zenobia’s conversation in the opening scene.

Zenobia begins by praising Aseneth:

Dottola naturaleza

de muy sabia y muy hermosa,

muy cuerda y muy virtuosa;

y sobre muy gran rriqueza,

ser tu hija es mayor cosa;

y otra cosa enrriqueçida,

qu’es suprema onestidad

y casta virginidad

en rrelision [(religión)] rrecogida,

55 In fact, the playwright invites the audience to look for such symbolism by declaring in the Loa: “Mil cosas ay que sentir / en aquestos casamientos” (46-47) 168

agena de liviandad. (86-95)

Here she divides Aseneth’s qualities into two categories: those given to her by nature, such as wisdom and beauty, and those that she has developed, including honesty, chastity, and religious devotion. Interestingly, this passage appears to be an adaptation of a passage in JosAs that says, “Asseneth was as great as Sarah, as lovely as Rebecca, as beautiful as Rachel” (Beauvais 456). Just as in the classical novel the heroine displays the qualities of the ideal Jewish woman before becoming one, in the Spanish play she shows the characteristics valued by Christian society before her conversion.

Potiphar and Zenobia’s appraisal of Aseneth continues:

Butifar: No es como las galanas

de agora, amigas de fiestas,

de festejos ni rrequestas,

que son, por ser palaçianas,

a las vezes desonestas.

Zenobia: Es verdad las donzellas

tienen gran disuliçion.

Butifar: Donzellas, quales lo son?

porqu’el don pierden aquellas

que pretenden corruçion . . . . (101-10)

If the audience up to this point believes that the criticism is directed solely at the women of ancient Egypt, the phrase “por ser palaçianas” indicates that any and all ladies who frequent the court are likely to display the same vices mentioned by Potiphar. The 169

implication of this social criticism is that a virtuous non-Christian is already superior to a licentious Christian, and that therefore the former should be accepted after conversion.

The final element of the converso perspective is double-language, involving some kind of ambiguity in communication. This ambiguity is to be found in Desposorios in the play’s use of the Bobo character. McGaha, after rightly recognizing that Desposorios is the first version of the Joseph story to include a Bobo, then writes off this innovation by saying, “The play’s comic scenes are somewhat crude and intrusive, and detract from its overall seriousness” (The Story 87). I disagree, and instead concur with John Brotherton, who, in his highly insightful study of the Bobo in pre-Lopesque theater, laments,

“[c]ritics have been prepared too often to dismiss the intervention of the Pastor-Bobo as

‘comic relief’” (xiii). He argues that “The selection of comic material was frequently very purposeful and precise: the Pastor-Bobo is often much more than a mere buffoon and his comicalness sometimes has a more exact function than critics have previously suspected”

(xi). This function is “to draw attention to, rather than distract from, the moral and theological issues raised by his creators” (Brotherton 46). Although thoroughly exhibiting the Bobo’s conventional buffoonery, the Bobo in Desposorios represents ambiguous language because of the contrast between his foolishness and the wisdom exhibited in some of his remarks. This ambiguity contributes to the overall theme of equality in the play.

The Bobo in Desposorios displays all of the traits of a conventional Bobo perfectly:

170

The most important of these is his use of the conventional rustic jargon,

sayagués, which might be considered as his identifying characteristic. He

is also differentiated from the more seriously conceived pastoral types,

with whom he comes into contact occasionally, by his name, which tends

to be humble and, at times, comic. There are various other attributes

associated with the character: laziness, greed, ignorance, superstitiousness,

boorishness, obscenity and indifference. All Pastores-Bobos reveal certain

of these traits; few possess them all. (Brotherton ix)

Our Bobo speaks sayagués, is appropriately named “Bobo,” and displays greed, ignorance, and boorishness. Yet he differs from the conventional Bobo in a function that

Brotherton explains: “The essence of the comicalness of the Pastor-Bobo is that he awakens a patronising superiority in his audience. They delight in his stupidity and thereby confirm their own knowledge and, in this regard, faith” (Brotherton 52). In the case of Desposorios’ Bobo, the laughter is sometimes uneasy because of the truthfulness behind what he says.

The author of Desposorios establishes the fact that this Bobo sometimes speaks the truth by having the more serious characters in the play echo things that the Bobo himself has said previously. For example, when Joseph is arriving the Bobo makes a lot of commotion, which Potiphar calls a necedad. The Bobo responds:

que teneis un conbidado,

y es neçedad, en verdad,

conbidar a honbre criado. (128-30) 171

Although it seems comical that he would call the vizier of Egypt a criado, it is the truth that Joseph had in fact previously served in Potiphar’s own house. Thus, when shortly thereafter Aseneth rejects the idea of marriage calling him a “cautivo extranjero,” she is echoing the Bobo’s own observation about Joseph’s former status (186). Later, when

Joseph arrives and he and Potiphar exchange greetings and offers of service, the Bobo interrupts and says, “Yo tanbien, como un hermano, / mill serviçios le e de her” (221-22).

The humor lies is the fact that a servant would call himself the brother of the vizier, but at the same time it is true that Joseph had once been his equal. Joseph, as Aseneth did previously, echoes the Bobo’s words when he says, referring to Aseneth: “Yo la amare en hermandad” (266). The fact that the two main serious characters in the play echo the

Bobo’s words diminishes the latter’s comical nature and highlights the fact that he often speaks the truth. There is even an example of Joseph following the Bobo’s advice when, after the former prevents Aseneth from kissing him, the latter says,

Mira quien no consintie

un besso tan agraçiado!

No lo hiziera yo, a fee.

Veis ay triste la donzella;

en soras de aver gasajo

llora con muy gran trabajo.

Acabe, lleguese a ella,

digale algun rresquebrajo. (308-15)

To which Joseph responds by comforting Aseneth and giving her a blessing. 172

By portraying the Bobo as simultaneously buffoonish and wise, the playwright has prepared the audience for the ultimate moment of ambiguity in the work. It is when

Aseneth, having repented of her idolatry, throws her idols from her window. The Bobo happens to be walking by and, finding the broken statues, says:

O! qu’es esto? Cata, cata,

un tesoro he allado.

Que santo tan quillotrado!

qu’esto es oro y esto prata. (421-25)

The Bobo confuses the idols that Aseneth was destroying with a Catholic saint! Because the playwright has established the Bobo as a conventional fool, this statement can be read as a comic example of his ignorance in religious matters. Typically this type of ignorance in a Bobo serves to allow the spectator to “[confirm] his own faith” (Brotherton 49). But this reading is complicated by the fact that the Bobo has also made a number of wise observations up to this point in the play. This leaves open the possibility that the statement is to be taken seriously, in which case the playwright is insinuating that the

Catholic devotion to saints is a form of idolatry. Given the overall Christian tone of the play, such an extreme criticism of Catholicism seems unlikely, but the ambiguity at least draws attention to the thin line between Catholic and non-Catholic religious practices.

The result is a minimization of religious difference that makes conversion more acceptable and places conversos on equal footing with Old Christians.

The two versions of the Joseph story produced during the sixteenth century are both rich and complex works that merit more scholarly attention than they have 173

heretofore received. They exhibit innovation of structure and style, and they participate in a converso discourse that calls on Old Christians to recognize the unifying power of the sacraments and put aside their prejudices against newcomers to the faith. In the first few decades of the seventeenth century the story of Joseph will move from the carros of the

Corpus Christi celebration, with its emphasis on religious unity, to the corral de comedias, where theological concerns will be minimized.

A More Secular Converso Perspective in Lope de Vega’s Los trabajos de Jacob

Although Lope de Vega is Spain’s most influential playwright of the Golden Age for having popularized the comedia genre and developed a national theater, his version of the Joseph story, Los trabajos de Jacob, has received very little critical attention. Those few scholars who have studied it have not examined in much detail its complexity regarding the converso problem. I argue that, on the one hand, Lope includes very few

Jewish and Muslim details from the play and manipulates the plot in such a way as to imply the impossibility of Christian-Semitic reconciliation. On the other hand, despite this apparent anti-Semitism, he manifests a converso perspective through his sense of equality, heterodoxy, and ambiguity. Thus, in the same way that in Trabajos the Joseph story is detached from the Corpus Christi performance context of the previous century and moved to the more secular corral de comedias, the converso perspective of those versions is also detached from its Judaic roots.

Trabajos seems to have been written between 1620-1630, and its earliest known performance was in 1635 (Morley and Bruerton 99; Peña Fernández 199). It is one of 174

Lope’s four known biblical plays and is the second in what was intended to be an Old

Testament trilogy. The trilogy begins with El robo de Dina, a play about Joseph’s older sister in which Joseph appears as a child without a speaking role, and was meant to end with La salida de Egipto, a never written play on the Exodus (Canning 12; McGaha, The

Story 101). Given the lateness of the work’s writing and performance, it is reasonable to believe, as McGaha posits, that the title Trabajos de Jacob is owing to Lope’s self- identification with the elderly Jacob’s grief for his family (McGaha, Story 102-03).

In the past hundred years scholars have mainly focused on the work’s adherence to the Bible and aesthetic quality. Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo offered a brief study of

Trabajos in 1919, in which he sees it as superior to Robo because of the greater dramatic interest inherent in the biblical version of the Joseph story (170). He describes the work as a “pieza que ciertamente no es perfecta, pero en la cual abundan raras excelencias”

(175). Haydee M. Burkort focuses entirely on a rather stretched analysis of New

Testament typology that she perceives in the work, and concludes, “Lope’s purpose of creating a model of Christ is totally successful” (116-17). J.M. Escudero concurs with

Menéndez y Pelayo that the work follows Genesis generally, with some necessary modifications: “se puede observar a lo largo de la comedia cómo Lope con ciertas limitaciones, debidas en parte a las características morfológicas de una compañía en el

Siglo de Oro, se atiene con bastante rigor a lo relatado en la Biblia.” The result of these minor adjustments, according to Escudero, is that the work “cumple con los principios básicos de la verosimilitud y el predominio de la Poesía sobre la Historia” (226). McGaha turns his attention more closely to the play’s structure, which provides “a continuous 175

balance between the fast-moving action and pauses for tender lyricism and philosophical reflection” (Story 102). He calls Trabajos “probably the most skilled dramatization of the story of Joseph written in Spain” (Story 103).

Francisco Fernández Peña is the first scholar to move beyond this type of aesthetic appraisal and attempt to grapple with the complexity of the converso problem in

Trabajos, although the brevity of his article leaves room for further inquiry into the matter. He notes that the account of Joseph contained in Genesis portrays the possibility of resolution for two kinds of conflicts: “nos ofrece un modelo de resolución de conflicto que no es ya exclusivamente entre miembros de un mismo pueblo, sino entre dos pueblos diferentes” (197-98). For him, the fact that Joseph’s brothers are half-brothers makes them ideal for theatrical adaptation as metaphors for the Jews, Muslims, and conversos because “son o han sido también españoles” (199). In other words, these minority groups are only partially the Other against which Spaniards construct their identity. Peña

Fernández demonstrates, however that Lope purposely associates his version of the story to the story of Cain and Abel, which seriously undermines the reconciliatory possibilities of the biblical account: “el conflicto entre José y sus medios hermanos está siendo conscientemente relacionado con un litigio que en la Biblia no posee ni resolución, ni tampoco nos dirige a una posibilidad de reconciliación entre las figuras enfrentadas”

(Peña Fernández 202). In other words, by associating Joseph and his brothers with Abel and Cain, Lope is portraying the impossibility of reconciliation between Old and New

Christians. As further evidence of this, Peña Fernández discusses the absence of the

176

father of the Jewish people, Judah, in the scene in which Joseph reveals his identity and forgives his brothers. This signals a major departure from the Genesis version:

Judáh, el medio-hermano que histórica y tipológicamente es asociado con

la imagen del judío, está completamente ausente en este reencuentro y en

la escena de la reconciliación. El clímax del relato bíblico que tiene lugar

con una fraternal reunión y una celebración de la misma es completamente

transformado y desviado. Lope prefiere atender a la resolución de otros

conflictos que nada tienen que ver con el texto bíblico. (211)

The absence of Judah in the moment of forgiveness, according to Peña Fernández, is emblematic of the impossibility of reconciliation between Jews and Christians in early modern Spain.

I agree at least in part with the basic views of each of these scholars: that Trabajos maximizes dramatic interest, is generally faithful to its scriptural source, incorporates

Christian typology, and minimizes the possibility of reconciliation between New and Old

Christians. On the other hand, I believe that these conservative aspects of the play do not necessarily preclude the possibility of more subversive elements, sometimes running directly counter to and often at least complicating the work’s apparent ideology.

In this assertion I align myself with a growing number of recent scholars who are reexamining the 1970’s conclusions of José María Díez Borque and José Antonio

Maravall about the propagandist nature of the comedia and calling for a more

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heteroglossic reading of Spanish national theater and its founder.56 One critic who began early to try to explain the ideological contradictions in Lope’s drama was María Rosa

Lida de Malkiel, who posits Lope’s devotion to art as the reason for the “extrañas contradicciones entre lo que escribe Lope el poeta y lo que hace Lope el hombre . . .”:

Lope es ante todo, antes que español del siglo XVII, antes que hombre

inscrito en una interferencia de tiempo y de espacio, en un ámbito cultural

geográfico-histórico, antes que todo es dramaturgo. Sus criaturas no son

portavoces suyos, hablan y viven por sí, y Lope se identifica genialmente

con cada una, por opuestas que las hubiera sentido en la vida real. (81)

Since Lope allows each of his characters to express ideas that may or may not be contrary to his own or his society’s, there is the possibility of sympathy towards minorities. David

Gitlitz, after making clear that “Lope was almost certainly an anti-Semite,” argues that in some of his works the playwright “at least articulates the concern of the new-Christian minority” (“New-Christian” 64). Catherine Swietlicki further develops this idea, basing her discussion on the Bakhtinian concepts of monoglossia and heteroglossia:

Golden Age Spain exhibits a mixture of monoglossia (discourse of the

traditional ethnocentric, monolithic culture) and of heteroglossia

(utterances characterized by varied social, geographical, and historical

dialects). The notion of an underlying dialogic quality in language and in

all human activities can help us to reveal ways in which Lope—the

56 See Díez Borque, Sociología and Maravall, Teatro. 178

supposed monologic voice of a monolithic Spanish society—heard and

wrote of the voices of otherness in his society. (206)

This dialogism, according Swietlicki, explains the contradictions in Lope’s life and work:

“Although most of the examples of Jewish speech in [Lope’s work] function in opposition to Christian discourse, occasionally the Jewish discourse appears to be colored with authorial sympathy even when it occurs in a curious anti-Semitic context” (213).

Melveena McKendrick, in her seminal history of Golden Age theater, even goes so far as to assert that self-contradiction is a defining characteristic of the comedia: “The technique of writing plays that move in strikingly different directions at once, with the action leading one way, the language bearing us off in another, is one of the comedia’s distinctive achievements” (Theatre 76). In Lope’s case, this is due to the poet’s own contradictory nature:

Not a man of intellectual or philosophical bent, he took for granted the

larger, transcendental patterns of seventeenth-century belief, but he

approached man’s passions and problems, his human and social identity,

with a deep compassion and a keen sense of irony born of the

irreconcilable contradiction of his own nature. (Theatre 86)57

In her discussion of Lope’s better known biblical play, La hermosa Ester, Elaine

Canning argues that both orthodoxy and heterodoxy coexist in the work: “Lope presents

La hermosa Ester from both perspectives, both Christian and Jewish. By this I mean that

57 Space does not allow for a review of McKendrick’s far more thorough rebuttal of Díez Borque and Maravall’s propaganda theory as found in Playing the King. 179

Ester is not only Esther, the saviour of the Jewish people, but also simultaneously a prefiguration of the Virgin” (42). This leads her to assert, “The presence of subversive voices in the play does not preclude an orthodox Christian interpretation, or vice versa”

(42).

Most recently, Andrew Herskovits has developed extensively the idea that propaganda and subversion are able to coexist in the Golden Age comedia: “it is well to remember that traces of propaganda for the official line in a comedia need not imply that the dramatist is a propagandist” (“Towards” 251). He goes on to say, “The comedia was not simple propaganda, but often ironic and subversive; not simply anti-Jewish, but often sympathetic to Jews” (“Towards” 277). He explains the need for irony as a form of disimulatio: “The presentation of an explicitly sympathetic Jewish hero in a comedia would have been rejected by the public and would have brought down upon the writer the suspicion of the Inquisition” (“Towards” 252).

Taking into account the often contradictory nature of Lope’s work, I will examine some of the unorthodox strains to be found in Trabajos. Although this work adheres more faithfully to the Bible than any previous version, there are still Jewish and Muslim allusions embedded in the text. Although Lope manipulates the plot, as Peña Fernández demonstrates, to imply the impossibility of reconciliation between Spanish Christians and

Spain’s Semitic minorities, a converso perspective nevertheless permeates the overall tone of the play.

The first example of Semitic influence in the play is actually also an example of the strict adherence to Genesis. As explained in previous chapters, Christian writers from 180

the early Fathers to Carvajal unanimously change the price for which Joseph was sold from twenty to thirty pieces of silver. In response, Jewish and Muslim versions have often gone out of their way to emphasize the original price of twenty. Lope opts for twenty, thereby maintaining orthodoxy on the one hand by following the Bible, but subtly calling attention to the unorthodoxy of the Christian exegetical tradition that strays from the Genesis version. Lope obliquely connects this detail to Judaism by including one of only two mentions of Judah in the play in the following line:

a quien por veinte reales,

y por consejo de Judas,

para que no me matasen

me vendieron a tu esposo

de la manera que sabes. (53, italics mine)58

Although Joseph is addressing Potiphar’s wife, “Nicela,” in this passage, his speech also serves to bring the audience up to date on the action leading up to this opening scene of the play. Therefore when Joseph says “de la manera que sabes,” he is reminding the audience of their likely familiarity with the story, which also reminds them that the price is normally thirty in Christian tradition.

The above example demonstrates Lope’s technique for incorporating unorthodox elements: although a detail may reflect Jewish or Muslim tradition, it is usually only an obscure allusion with an easy way to defend its Catholic orthodoxy to the Inquisition (in this case by recourse to the Bible). Another example is Joseph’s flight from Nicela:

58 Since the editor does not include line numbers, references are to page numbers. 181

La capa te dejaré

para señal de la fe

que he guardado a Putifar.

Ahí te puedes vengar,

si no es que tus vicios tapa;

y así harás en esa capa,

con venganza de mujer,

lo que el toro suele hacer

del hombre que se le escapa. (56)

Although Joseph’s leaving the garment is certainly biblical, the emphasis on its function as a “señal de la fe” echoes the Qu’ran:

A witness from her household said:

“If his shirt is torn from the front,

she’s telling the truth and he’s lying,

but if his shirt is torn from behind,

she’s lying and he’s telling the truth.” (12:26-27)

The allusion is defensible both because of its faintness and because of the dramatic irony that it produces: Joseph’s “señal de la fe” becomes the evidence that convicts him.59

Upon his conviction, though, he makes another faintly Muslim allusion: “pero viva mi

59 As for Joseph’s calling Nicela a bull, this appears to come from the Portuguese theologian Frei Heitor Pinto: “Assi como o toureyro vendose apertado do touro lhe deixa a capa nos cornos, & se acolhe: assi o casto Ioseph deixou a capa nas mãos da incontinente Egypcia, & se acolheo” (qtd. in Glaser 50) 182

inocencia / y máteme tu venganza” (57). This preference of punishment over sin is comparable to his cry in the Qur’an “O my Lord! I prefer prison to what I’m urged to do”

(12:33).

Finally, as McGaha points out, Lope includes the Jewish midrashic motif of

Joseph’s putting straw in the river as a signal to Jacob that Egypt has grain (Story 101).60

The passage in question, however, makes no mention of straw: “pues acá nos traen señales / los ríos que de allá vienen” (64). Lope borrows the motif because of the logical cohesion that it brings to the story, but modifies it just enough to give him plausible deniability should anyone recognize it as being Jewish.

Just as a fairly strict adherence to the Bible and the clever hiding of Semitic details allow Lope to include heterodox elements with impunity, so does the overall theme of the impossibility of reconciliation with conversos permit him to actually write from a converso perspective without fear of reprisal. Superficially, Lope seems to actively de-Semitize the story. In addition to Peña Fernández’s conclusions reviewed above about the exclusion of Judah, I would point out that the word “judío” never appears in the work, and is instead replaced by “hebreos” in the very few instances where mention is made of the Israelites’ race or nation. As Herskovits explains, “the word

‘Jew,’ even in a biblical context, was not neutral in the Spanish Golden Age” (Positive

139). The decision to avoid the word distances the story from the race issues of early modern Spain. Another instance of this distancing is the fact that Aseneth is never named and receives only an oblique reference in the play. As I discussed above, Los desposorios

60 McGaha also notes the possible Muslim allusion to Nicela waiting at the crossroads. 183

de José, which was quite popular in Lope’s lifetime, presents Aseneth as a model convert and her marriage to Joseph as the ideal union between Old and New Christians under the banner of Catholicism. By minimizing her role, Lope avoids any discussion of such a union.

It is precisely all of this distancing from the limpieza de sangre problems that gives the playwright free rein to weigh in on other contemporary issues, expressing his ideas from a converso perspective similar to the one found in the sixteenth-century plays studied above. This perspective consists of a sense of individualism and equality, heterodoxy and social criticism, and ambiguous language. He addresses the idea of equality, but detaches it from the emphasis on the equalizing power of the Eucharist and instead focuses on the shared humanity of kings and commoners. While the anonymous author of Desposorios directs his social criticism against the loose morals of court ladies,

Lope criticizes the courtiers and royal advisors of his day. And, whereas Carvajal’s use of irony lays bare the disparity between Spanish society’s celebration of Old Testament figures and the persecution of their converso descendents, Lope’s ambiguous treatment of the rustic characters’ romance reveals the irony of a society that celebrates love on the stage and in poetry while enforcing social boundaries that prevent inter-class marriage.

The theme of equality is evident in the play’s treatment of monarchy. Christian writers often make much of the title “Salvador del Mundo” that Pharaoh gives Joseph

184

upon promoting him to vizier, seeing it as evidence of his function as a type of Christ.61

Lope, however, emphasizes Joseph’s human side by having him pray:

Vos solo sois Salvador,

divino Señor del cielo,

que de la envidia y la cárcel

me sacáis a Rey de un reino. (62)

This prayer removes the divinity associated with Joseph because of his title, thereby humanizing him and, by extension, all rulers. Lope has Joseph expand upon the idea

(appropriately, in octavas reales) a few scenes later: “Dios hace reyes, que las buenas leyes / tienen principio en Dios y no en los reyes” (65). This assertion reflects the prevailing intellectual understanding of monarchy as subject to law, which McKendrick explains in the following way:

The seventeenth-century Spanish consensus on the virtues that should be

expected of the prince privileged the traditional qualities of prudence,

liberality and justice, justice being a concept that comprehended the

equality of all men, including the king, before the law, and embraced both

distributive and commutative justice; these governed respectively relations

between the state and its parts (justice in the distribution of rewards and

punishments) and those between parts of the state (equality in the

distribution of rewards and punishments). (Playing 18)

61 Interestingly, the title “Salvator mundi” given in the Vulgate is a translation error. McGaha cites Nahum Sarna, who affirms that the original Hebrew should translate as something more like “mantenedor de la vida” (Calderón 34). 185

Given this view of distributive justice, it comes as no surprise that the playwright has

Joseph say shortly thereafter when distributing the grain: “Los frutos, del linaje humano herencia, / queden con igualdad distribuidos, / dando sustento a todos igualmente” (66).

The fact that such an ideally equal distribution of goods often does not happen is made clear when Bato, the gracioso and representative of the servant class, complains, “los ricos lo comen todo, / los pobres todo lo ayunan” (76). Díez Borque asserts that normally

“El convertir el hambre en motivo cómico y el adscribirla exclusivamente al gracioso, supone evitar y anular, en la comedia, la importancia del problema en la realidad” (241). I believe, however, that given Joseph’s previous comments about equal distribution, it is reasonable to assume that Bato’s comments constitute real social criticism on the part of the playwright. At the very least, Lope’s emphasis on equality is an element of the converso perspective detached from the sense of spiritual equality between Old and New

Christians and reassigned to the issue of class difference.

The social criticism is even more apparent in the play’s references to courtiers and royal advisors. The subject was a pressing one during the time that Lope was writing, because Phillip IV had just ascended the throne in 1621 at a young age and relied heavily on advisors. The dangers of unscrupulous advisors are made apparent in the play. For example, Potiphar’s house is depicted as a palace in miniature in which Joseph is the model steward. When he is arrested, one of the other servants, Servio, demonstrates the type of palace intrigue caused by envy when he mutters contentedly, “Esta vez acaba / la privanza de Josef / y la envidia que me daba” (57). Later, Pharaoh’s advisors are shown as inept in interpreting the ruler’s dreams, to which he responds, “Ignorantes sois los dos” 186

(60). To envy and ineptness Lope adds forgetfulness and selfishness in the butler’s apology to Pharaoh for not remembering Joseph:

Porque te hubiera servido

si mi memoria no fuera

de hombre que sirve en palacio,

que de sí solo se acuerda. (60)

To which Pharaoh responds, expanding the idea:

Los palacios de los reyes,

a quien una vez los entra,

son como río de olvido.

Pocas veces aprovecha

el ruego del miserable,

el papel, la diligencia:

solo de su aumento trata,

solo su provecho intenta. (61)62

Lope himself had had recent experience with seeing his own “ruego del miserable” ignored by the king’s top advisor, the Count-Duke Olivares. As McKendrick explains,

“although for a while in the early 1620s [Lope] assiduously dedicated works to the

Count-Duke and Countess of Olivares in an attempt to attract their patronage, he reaped scant reward other than a small royal pension in Galicia” (Playing 33).

62 Also cited as example of political critique in McGaha, “La comedia” 296. 187

This criticism of courtiers does not imply, however, a call for the system to be banished, but rather as a warning to court officials to behave ethically. Lope depicts

Joseph as a model of government ethics. For example, he treats Potiphar, the very man who had imprisoned him, with respect, which in turn causes Potiphar to realize Joseph’s innocence:

Sin duda estaba inocente,

porque el hombre que es vicioso,

si llega a ser poderoso

ejecuta lo que siente. (66)

The message is that power corrupts those who are corrupt to begin with. For Lope, humility is the main requirement for a career in government, as Joseph expresses later when Nicela asks forgiveness and begs him to intercede with the king on Potiphar’s behalf:

Yo no soy de los privados

que desvanece el lugar;

de los reyes se ha se usar

como de hombres; los Estados

tienen principio y aumento,

estado y disminución.

Es la humana condición,

como una veleta al viento.

Hoy soy, y puedo no ser, 188

y pues ves que ser no puedo,

si mañana sin ser quedo,

¿qué puedo sin ser poder?

Haré bien a tu marido . . . . (84)63

Instead of allowing his circumstances to corrupt him (“que desvanece el lugar”), Joseph keeps in mind the ephemeral nature of power and life, which induces him to generosity.

This emphasis on personal integrity and humility as conditions for power reflects the converso perspective’s primacy of action over lineage as communicated in the sixteenth- century plays.

The final element of the converso perspective that Lope adopts and adapts in

Trabajos is that of ambiguous communication. In this case, the ambiguity lies in the comical romance between the servants Bato and Lida, which ends in an indeterminacy far from A.A. Parker’s idea of poetic justice (Approach 29). The conflict at work is the poetic “convencional poder absoluto del amor que puede trastocar la estructura social y sus leyes,” as Díez Borque puts it, in contrast with “la necesidad de igualdad social para que pueda existir el amor, sin posibilidad de quebrantar esta rígida reglamentación . . .”

(64). The tension between these poetic and social conventions generates sympathy for

Lida and the women she represents.

The audience is introduced to Bato and Lida directly after Joseph’s arrest. The scene begins with Lida’s indignation at something that Bato says before the scene begins, to which the latter responds:

63 Also cited in McGaha, “La comedia” 296. 189

Soy tu igual.

Lida:

Eres mi igual;

pero no te tengo amor,

y para hacerte favor

no hay cosa tan desigual. (57-58)

From Bato’s perspective, their shared social class is sufficient reason for them to be together, but for Lida love is requisite for a relationship. Since she is Dina’s maid, she is familiar with the events of the previous play, El robo de Dina, in which her mistress is raped by a prince and then, when offered, rejects the idea of marriage to her rapist:

Si yo aborrezco a Siquen,

¿qué se me da que me den

los tesoros del oriente?

. . . reinar y disgusto

no se han de compadecer:

ni hay reino para mujer

como marido a su gusto. (48)

Lope makes clear that Lida is indeed familiar with Dina’s situation by having her allude to it in the next scene after speaking to Bato:

Que solo el campo a la soledad la inclina:

huye de ver la gente,

como si fuera en la traición culpada 190

de aquel mozo insolente

de quien fue bien querida y mal gozada. (59)

The plot is further complicated by the fact that Lida rejects Bato because she is actually in love with Benjamin. The play makes it clear that Benjamin belongs to the nobility, as when Joseph refers to their father’s “noble condición” (53). Her situation is therefore impossible: she does not love the man that society allows her to marry, and marriage to the man that she does love is prohibited.

Lida crosses the line of social convention and declares her love for Benjamin, for which, seemingly at least, she is swiftly and doubly punished by poetic justice: first,

Benjamin rejects her soundly, “Suéltame: no seas pesada; / que yo no entiendo de amor”

(63). Second, it so happens that Bato witnesses the conversation and blackmails her: “o amarme, o voy a parlar” (63). Although she consents to Bato, she continues to entreat

Benjamin in secret. His response to her seems an indication of Díez Borque’s general observation that in the comedia “Hay una tácita aceptación de que el amor noble tiende hacia un objeto digno de él, de modo que sólo es posible que el caballero quiera a una dama y al revés . . .” (71):

La hermosura de tu ser

naturalmente me obliga,

mas no sé cómo te diga

que no entiendo qué es amor,

si ave, fiera, planta o flor

en su triunfo enlaza y liga. 191

Amor es inclinación

que se causa y no se entiende,

fuego que en el alma enciende

el aire del corazón;

sus dos alas, Lida, son

una agrado, otra deseo;

si en servirte no me empleo,

es porque el alma no inspiran;

que lo que los ojos miran,

en los del alma no veo. (70)

To an audience familiar with the taboo of inter-class romance, it would seem natural that

Benjamin’s lack of desire for her is due to her inferior status.

Up to this point Lope’s depiction of Lida is sympathetic yet socially orthodox and unambiguous. But one would expect Benjamin to eventually find a woman of his own class to marry and thereby restore order. Instead, the only passion that Benjamin ever feels is towards Joseph. The scene in which they meet for the first time in Egypt, before

Joseph reveals his identity, is worth citing extensively. Joseph, in an aside, begins:

Pero no haya más enojos,

porque es tan bello el rapaz,

que basta a ponerse en paz

el corazón y los ojos,

que imagen de los despojos 192

por que tanto nombre dan

a Raquel, mirando están;

si era así mi hermosa madre,

¿qué me espanto que mi padre

sirviese tanto a Labán? (74)

Joseph’s gaze turns sexually ambiguous as he compares Benjamin’s beauty to Rachel’s, with whom their father had been so much in love. After Bato notices Joseph’s attention to

Benjamin, Benjamin replies,

Bato, después que le vi,

turbado estoy.

Bato:

¿De qué suerte?

Benjamin:

No te lo sabré decir;

pero sé que el corazón

con una cierta pasión

me ha comenzado a rendir. (74)

Even after Benjamin finds out that the vizier is actually Joseph, he says,

Desde el punto en que te vi

no sé qué sentí en mi pecho,

que te amaba satisfecho

de ver tanta gracia en ti. (80) 193

These ambiguous passages suggest two forms of attraction far more taboo and sterile than an inter-class relationship: incest and homosexuality.64

The implication of the ambiguous Bato-Lida-Benjamin triangle in the play is an unsettling sense of indeterminacy. Order has been restored in one sense because

Benjamin rebukes Lida for attempting to cross social boundaries and gives her to Bato in marriage. But, as Catherine Connor (Swietlicki) says,

The real closure is not the way the play concludes or ends in a wedding,

but rather it is the web of meanings attached to that marriage as an event

that is significant in terms of the audience and the roles that a staged

marriage might play in the lives of particular spectators. (31)

This “web of meanings” may include sympathy for Lida, who not only must marry someone that she does not love, but whose husband has vowed “Desta vez pienso vengarme / . . . que ha de rogarme/ y que no la he de querer! (81). Any satisfaction that

Benjamin was right in rejecting her is tempered by the fact that the character’s endogamic instincts have only led him to an infertile type of attraction. The hopelessness of the situation for both seems to imply a criticism of the inter-class romance taboo that perpetuates an unproductive class system.

The authors of Tragedia and Desposorios adapt the story of Joseph in order to communicate a converso perspective critical of the Old Christian-dominated society of sixteenth-century Spain. They propose a theological solution: that both Old and New

Christians ought to be equal through the power of the Host. Writing in the subsequent

64 On Lope’s treatment of homoerotic desire in other plays, see Heiple. 194

generation, Lope chooses to abandon the theological aspects of this perspective while borrowing its critical strategies. He moves the play from the Corpus Christi context to the more secular corral de comedias, at the same time that he moves the social criticism to a more secular arena. While his disciple Antonio Mira de Amescua will also write a version of the Joseph story for the corral, later Baroque playwrights will return Joseph to the carros.

195

Chapter 4: The Functions of Metatheater in the Late Seventeenth Century

As discussed previously, the medieval versions of the Joseph story display a complex dynamic of appropriation and cultural boundary-maintaining mechanisms that contribute to the construction of religious identity. In the sixteenth century, as a response to the exclusive Old Christian attitude towards converts, New Christian playwrights appropriated the story of Joseph and associated it with the Corpus Christi festival as a vehicle for their more inclusive view of national identity. Lope de Vega was the culmination of the socially critical attitude of the sixteenth-century versions while emptying this attitude of much of its Semitic content and detaching the story from the

Corpus Christi celebration. After Lope, a new trend emerged in Josephine adaptations: metatheater. Antonio Mira de Amescua deserves credit for initiating the self-reflective trend in the Joseph plays, and such notable dramatists as Pedro Calderón de la Barca and

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz further developed and perfected this tendency. I argue that there is a progression in the metatheatricality among these three playwrights. Mira’s metatheater not only calls attention to the creative process, but also interrogates the processes of exegesis and identity formation so characteristic of earlier versions.

Calderonian metatheater serves more didactic and dogmatic purposes. Sor Juana then turns the attention to this didacticism in order to once again question the dynamics of exegesis and identity formation, while asserting her right as a criolla intellectual to participate in these processes.

196

Lionel Abel coined the term “metatheater” and inaugurated a systematic approach to its study with his 1963 book Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form. He defines metatheater as

theatrical pieces about life seen as already theatricalized. By this I mean

that the persons appearing on the stage in these plays are there not simply

because they were caught by the playwright in dramatic postures as a

camera might catch them, but because they themselves knew they were

dramatic long before the playwright took note of them. What dramatized

them originally? Myth, legend, past literature, they themselves. They

represent to the playwright the effect of dramatic imagination before he

has begun to exercise his own. (qtd. in Larson 205-06)

This definition is quite relevant to my study because, in the creations of Mira, Calderón, and Sor Juana, the characters in the Joseph story are figures that have already been

“theatricalized” by the adaptations studied in previous chapters. By the time of the

Baroque, the Joseph legend was a story ripe for metatheatricalization.

Abel was not the first, however, to discuss the idea of metatheater; previous scholars had simply given it different names. Among the most influential of these is Ernst

Robert Curtius, who calls the phenomenon “Metáforas del teatro” in his 1948 study of

European intellectual and cultural history. After tracing the development of the theatrum mundi metaphor from its roots in pagan and early Christian thought, Curtius identifies two main tendencies or types of metatheater. The first is anthropocentric metatheater, which “contempla al hombre y lo desprende del cosmos y de las potencias religiosas, 197

para encerrarlo en la augusta soledad del espacio moral” (209). I would add that it can serve as social criticism in that it brings into question the sense of group identity upon which societies are constructed. The second is theocentric metatheater, which, according to Curtius, was invented by Calderón and conceives of the world as a theater “dirigido por Dios” (209). It questions reality for a different purpose: to contrast the mundane with the divine and teach religious dogma.

Perhaps some recognition of these two types of metatheater would have mitigated the heated debate among Hispanists during the 1970s concerning the applicability of

Abel’s ideas to Golden Age theater.65 It began with the publication of Thomas A.

O’Connor’s article “Is the Spanish Comedia a Metatheater?” in 1975. Although he makes some assertions and over-generalizations that have failed to hold water over time,66 his basic message is that in order for Abel’s term to fit Spanish theater, and particularly

Calderonian drama, it must be expanded to include the theocentric type of metadrama.

For example, he says, “the concept of metatheater would somehow have to be adapted to a theocentric and moral view of the world in which he who plays a role is doomed to self- deceit, while he who is loyal to his faith and God is saved from deceit and disaster”

(279). This theocentric form of metatheater stems from an absolute belief in a Catholic worldview: “The Spanish Catholic Church provided her people not only with truth in dogmatic matters, it also gave them the absolute guarantee that their vision, or view, of

65 For other reviews of this debate, see Larson 209-212 and Canning 87-93, along with corresponding bibliographies. 66 For example, his claim that comparison between Shakespeare and Spanish dramatists is impossible (288). 198

life was the only true one, the only valid one and, in essence, the only Christian one”

(288). Thus, while self-reflective elements do serve to question reality, in theocentric metatheater, “Reality is comprehensible if and when man learns to view it through

Christian revelation, and only if he is humble enough to submit to a higher authority vested in the Church” (O’Connor, “Spanish Comedia” 289).

Two scholars, Frank P. Casa and Stephen Lipmann, published reviews of

O’Connor’s article the following year in which they revise some of O’Connor’s stances.

In response to O’Connor’s idea that role-playing would have been considered sinful in the theocentric Spanish worldview, Casa clarifies that “while roles are assumed by personages of the Comedia, they do not always indicate inauthenticity or abandonment of previous positions” (29). This point is important because it shows the variety of functions that metatheater can have in Spanish theater, a point that Casa reiterates by insisting that

“a society, even one so heavily influenced by religion as this period in Spain, has other values that have some influence on the action of men and may even be in contradiction with the former” (31). That is to say, the theocentric form of metatheater is not the only one to be found in Golden Age drama, a thought with which I concur.

Lipmann seeks to address O’Connor’s assertion about the comparability

Shakespeare and Calderón: “To rule comparison of Shakespeare and Calderón out of the court on grounds of ideological differences seems oversimple” (Lipmann 245). I agree on this point, but it appears that Lipmann misunderstands O’Connor’s purpose on the issue of applying the concept of metatheater to Golden Age theater. While O’Connor was seeking to expand the definition of the term to include the theocentric perspective, 199

Lipmann appears to believe that O’Connor was arguing that the term does not apply at all. He therefore argues that “ a play which embodies an explicitly religious perspective on the characters’ perceptual and ethical difficulties need not for that reason be excluded from Abel’s genre” (238-39). His misunderstanding ultimately proves fortuitous, however, because it leads to his explanation of detachment as one of the effects of metatheater: “Our awareness of moral imperatives may result in greater detachment than we might have in watching a more secular metaplay, but detachment . . . seems to me an integral part of the response that metatheater elicits” (239). Thus, theocentric metadrama is just as critically interesting as its anthropocentric counterpart, which O’Connor goes on to reiterate in a response to Lipmann: “While it is possible and profitable to view Spanish metaplays only through the metaphysical perspective, I personally believe that including the theological perspective yields a richer reward” (“Metatheater” 338). Importantly,

O’Connor acknowledges in this second article that the use of metatheater in Golden Age drama “can be multifaceted and ambivalent” (“Metatheater” 337). This is indeed the case, as we shall see in versions of the Josephine story from that period.

More recent scholarship tends to see the analysis of metatheatrical elements as a useful tool in understanding early modern drama. For example, in a 1992 article, Anita

Stoll proposes metatheater as a pedagogical tool for organizing a survey course on

Golden Age drama. She asserts, “self-conscious techniques are so prevalent that they can virtually be considered a convention” (1343). In her 1994 article, Catherine Larson reviews the metatheater scholarship up to that date and proposes a number of issues yet to be explored by scholars. She argues that “metadrama remains an important issue in 200

theater criticism; as new theories modify existing concepts, we see the analytical tools that we once took for granted in a new light . . .” (212). In 1997 Irene Andrés-Suárez wrote an overview of the scholarship regarding metatheater, starting with Curtius, in which she labels the two perspectives that he identifies, the theocentric and the anthropocentric, as, respectively, “la religiosa” and “la escéptica” (12). In 2002 Jonathan

Thacker examined the metatheatrical concept of role-play, particularly in humorous plays, and argues that “role-play forms the dramatic action of many Golden-Age works . .

. and that this role-play permits a dramatic debate on the state and nature of society in seventeenth-century Spain” (3). Elaine Canning’s 2004 monograph updates the review of critical approaches to metatheater in early modern drama, and finds that “self-referential techniques in the comedia not only enabled the Golden Age playwright to manipulate the horizon of expectation of his audience, but also to reinforce the principal themes of the age” (93).

These and other scholars have added to and nuanced Abel’s definition of metatheater and discussed its implications, while focusing mainly on the anthropocentric tendency. Stoll gives this working definition: “It is a process by which the playwright enlists the enthusiastic cooperation of a willing reader/audience in the simultaneous creation and dismantling of the fiction of the play” (1343). Richard Hornby lists five metatheatrical devices used in this process:

1. The play within the play

2. The ceremony within the play

3. Role-playing within the role 201

4. Literary and real-life reference

5. Self-reference. (qtd. in Larson 207)

One other device that I would add to this list is that of deliberate anachronism. The use of any of these six devices carries a number of implications. According to Larson, “Such techniques by definition foreground the tension that exists between art and reality” (206-

07). She adds, “By causing the reader/spectator to contemplate the links between art and life, the dramatist raises any number of questions about the nature of the theater, about the metaphysical problems of the age, and about society in general” (208). Andrew

Herskovits sees a subversive tendency in this question raising: “Metatheatre makes the audience conscious that what it sees is an illusion, awakens its critical faculties and tends to subvert its false beliefs” (Positive 182). Thacker echoes the idea:

The metatheatrical allows a critical (often ironical) distance to open up

between the knowing character who consciously plays, and the ignorant

character who takes his role to be himself. One can consciously be

antisocial (i.e. undermine or contradict social expectations) through

deceitful role-play. The society on stage remains traditional, patriarchal,

but rebellion can be shown and society can be seen to change through

metatheatrical strategies. (Thacker 16)

Of interest to the present study is the relationship between metatheater and identity. Stoll says the following:

Role-playing within the role, like the play within the play, also distances

the audience from the fiction of the drama, calling attention to the 202

fictionality of the original role by foregrounding a second role. This type

of metadrama, which creates more than one identity for the player, calls

into question in the mind of the audience the whole area of identity. (1344)

Thacker discusses the generally theatrical nature of Spanish society during the post- expulsion, Counter-Reformation, and attributes this “histrionic urge” to “anxieties about identity—an identity that can be broadly termed social. A poor performance could lead to a life devastated” (Thacker 1). Metatheater calls attention to this every-day theatricality:

By showing the ease with which role-play can be manufactured, available

roles exploited, Golden-Age drama challenges the status of the roles

which do exist in society. It presents them as worn out. Metatheatre, in the

Golden Age, makes manifest the constructed, predictable nature of social

life, by demonstrating the ease with which society can be deceived by

characters’ self-dramatization, their metatheatrical strategies. It can do this

because the “real” society is also theatrical, because the conventions of

drama are related to the conventions of social life, because metatheatre is a

play-within-a-play-within-a-play. (18)

Thus, while the works that I have studied up to this point construct some form of ethnic or national identity, the metatheatrical works of Mira, Calderón, and Sor Juana, for varying purposes, turn the attention to this process of identity formation and reveal its constructedness.

Some nuance of the above statement may be in order. A few of the earlier versions of the Joseph story do in fact exhibit metaliterary characteristics, but not to the 203

same extent or for the same purposes as the baroque works. For example, Alfonso el

Sabio’s General estoria often discusses the process of selecting and compiling sources.

This metahistory, however, instead of raising questions about the processes of exegesis and identity formation, serves to assert authority over materials and, by extension, their classical and Semitic authors. The narrative poetic versions of the fifteenth century make reference to the real-world contexts in which they were recited, thereby calling attention to ethnic identity, but not questioning it. Carvajal’s Tragedia Josephina is metatheatrical in its use of Faraute’s speeches before each act to mediate between the audience and the spectacle, but the action of the play itself is nearly devoid of self-reference, allowing the audience to quickly return to its suspension of unbelief.

Lope’s Los trabajos de Jacob is surprisingly un-metadramatic. There is a passing reference to writers in the second act when the brothers, not recognizing Joseph now that he is a vizier, observe their brother’s reaction to seeing them:

Isacar:

La color se le ha mudado.

Neptalín:

En los hombres que gobiernan

hay este divertimiento,

como en los hombres de letras. (67)

Beyond this very slight self-reference, there is very little metatheatricality in the play.

The reason that this paucity is surprising is that metadrama is a predominant feature in many of Lope’s other works, and has drawn much critical attention. For 204

example, Canning does an extensive analysis of Lope’s Lo fingido verdadero and La buena guarda as metaplays (95-138). She argues that “there is no doubt that Lope’s exploitation of role-playing within the role . . . causes the outer audience to question the essence of identity” (138). Anita Stoll examines metadrama in the playwright’s El caballero de Olmedo, La dama boba, and El perro del hortelano. She uses the first as an example of literary allusion, and the latter two as examples of role-playing within the role, concluding that “Lope uses metatheatrical techniques to satirize the prevailing societal expectations” of marriage (1345-46). Jesús Gómez catalogues numerous metadramatic elements from several of Lope’s works, arguing that the playwright

suele utilizar las alusiones metateatrales en un sentido cómico, para

burlarse irónicamente de las propias convenciones sobre las que se

sustenta el género de la comedia, lo que origina un distanciamiento del

personaje con respecto al papel que desempeña en la trama. (224)

Perhaps the reason that Lope mostly avoids the technique in his Josephine adaptation is that, according to Gómez, the playwright “[r]ara vez desarrolla . . . las implicaciones filosóficas del [metateatro]” (223). That is to say, while Lope is perfectly willing to use self-referential devices to call attention to art and, in some cases, social customs, he would rather avoid pointing out the issues of cultural and national identity inherent in previous versions of the Joseph story. An aversion to open racial controversy would be in keeping with the relatively safe, de-Semitized converso perspective that he demonstrates in the play. Antonio Mira de Amescua, on the other hand, explores the

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possibilities for interrogating art and identity in his El más feliz cautiverio, y los sueños de Josef.

Mira’s Anthropocentric Metatheater in El más feliz cautiverio

Antonio Mira de Amescua (1574?-1644) was a contemporary of both Lope de

Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Although he was a well-known and respected dramatist in his lifetime, much of modern criticism either neglects or vituperates his work. After a brief overview of the life and critical reception of this lesser-known playwright, I will argue that the use of metatheater in his play Feliz cautiverio gives the work an important place in the evolution of the Josephine tradition by inaugurating a new tendency to interrogate the concept of identity and reveal its constructedness.

Mira was born out of wedlock to Melchor de Amescua y Mira and Beatriz de

Torres y Heredia around 1574 in Guadix, near Granada. He is therefore slightly younger than Lope and Cervantes, but a little older than Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Calderón. He had an ecclesiastical career, although, according to Karl C. Gregg, “Mira was not always conscientious where professional obligations were concerned” (17). After studying theology in Granada, he lived in Madrid, served a stint in Naples working for the

Viceroy, returned to Madrid where he was active in literary circles and competed in poetry contests, then finally accepted a seat as archdeacon in his hometown of Guadix,

206

where he seems to have ceased his literary production and resided until his death in

1644.67

Mira was a fairly prolific artist: James A. Castañeda lists the works attributed to him as fifty-three comedias, fifteen short theatrical works, and a handful of non-dramatic poems (29-35). His peers apparently admired his work because, according to Gregg, he was often mentioned in dedications and included in poetry collections (18). Juan Manuel

Villanueva affirms, “Lo admiraron sus contemporáneos sin excepciones” (377). One of the most notable accolades is to be found in Cervantes’ prologue to his own theatrical works, in which he praises “la grauedad del doctor Mira de Mescua, honra singular de nuestra nacion” (Ocho 8).

In spite of the obvious approval that his fellow writers had for his work, recent critics tend to either ignore Mira or view his work as second rate. As Villanueva puts it, there is a considerable contradiction between “la opinión negativa contemporánea y las alabanzas de los tiempos pretéritos, unánime entre los escritores áureos, encabezados por

Cervantes y Lope” (363). Ángel Valbuena Prat’s comments concerning Mira’s work have largely set the tone for modern criticism. He subordinates the playwright to Lope, saying,

“El teatro de Mira de Amescua se halla absolutamente comprendido en el ciclo de Lope”

(Mira xviii). He critiques Mira’s ability to construct an intriguing plot: “vemos . . . una sucesión de escenas, muchas veces sin trabazón íntima. Al lado de fuertes momentos de pasión y lucha psicológica, se desenvuelve una intriga fría y convencional” (Mira xxii).

67 See Castañeda 11-12 for a timeline of Mira’s life, and Casteñeda 13-20 and Gregg 14- 22 for more detailed biographical information. 207

Valbuena characterizes Mira’s style as “ampuloso y culterano” (Mira xxii), and denies any importance to the playwright’s biblical comedias: “No es un género irreprochable en

Mira. En general, las obras de este grupo son de escaso interés” (Mira xxx).

Interestingly, Valbuena does not include one biblical comedia, Feliz cautiverio, in his list of Mira’s works. This is because of the difficulty of attributing the work to him at the time that Valbuena was writing. The play, which Vern G. Williamsen dates to sometime after 1630, appears to have been quite popular for the next century and a half

(166). William F. Forbes cites Ada M. Coe’s finding of eight mentions of the play in newspaper announcements dating from 1661 to 1819, then says, “Se desconoce con exactitud las razones para esta popularidad” (188). In spite of his popularity, Mira himself never published a copy of this or any of his works (Casteñeda 25). The only copy of the play with his name on it dates to 1792. Confirmation of Mira’s authorship comes from Casteñeda’s thematic analysis, “One inclines to see Mira’s hand in the choice of another Biblical privado and in the recurrent motifs of envy and fortune” (113), and from

V. Williamsen’s analysis of versification, both from the 1970s.

Although Valbuena does not study Feliz cautiverio, his negative evaluation of the rest of Mira’s work has influenced some of those critics who have examined the play. For example, even though Castañeda sets out to defend Mira’s work in general, he criticizes what he calls “rather pedestrian language” in Feliz cautiverio, and assures that “the comedia’s action does little more than recount the story of Joseph” (113). It is Michael

McGaha, however, who is particularly vituperative towards Mira’s Josephine play. He chooses not to include it in his collection The Story of Joseph in Spanish Golden Age 208

Drama, because of what he calls “its poor quality.” He goes on to say, “It appears to have been hastily dashed off for a low-budget performance, and its main claim to fame is the fact that it served as Calderón’s principal model for his far superior auto” (11). He refers to Mira’s dialogue as “rather crude and clumsy” (148). In a different article, he calls the characters in Feliz cautiverio “rudos, torpes, y hasta groseros,” then continues:

A pesar de los muchos defectos de El más feliz cautiverio, contiene

intuiciones, conceptos, y situaciones que, en manos de un dramaturgo más

dotado, han dado resultados excelentes. Calderón supo minar esa veta de

metal de baja ley, convirtiéndola, como por arte de alquimia, en oro puro.

(McGaha, “La comedia” 300-01)

Some critics, however, challenge this negative evaluation. Forbes’ analysis is quite positive, for example. He recognizes the need to look beyond the mere re-telling of a biblical story and analyze its implications:

El efecto del uso del Antiguo Testamento era más que un interés de

museo; a nivel simbólico o mítico, proveía un contacto directo con la

historia de la religión cristiana. Pero hay más. El Antiguo Testamento

proveyó a la literatura del pueblo español del Siglo de Oro una nueva

versión de un ‘pueblo escogido o selecto de Dios,’ según se mostró en

Génesis . . . . (187)

Here Forbes discusses somewhat the issue of national identity in the sense that the

Spanish people may have identified with the Israelites, but he gives very little textual

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evidence of this. I believe that while the Spain-Israel parallel exists in earlier adaptations,

Mira’s metatheater questions this connection.

Another recent scholar, Amy R. Williamsen, makes a strong argument for the reevaluation of Mira’s work, saying:

I contend that contemporary criticism of Mira de Amescua’s theater relies,

to a great extent, on past judgments of his work. Some of these are

damaging, unfounded claims that have been accepted without challenge.

Thus, past reception of his comedias can act as a deception that misleads

critics and precludes them from perceiving vital aspects of his dramatic

achievement. (309)

I agree with this evaluation of past criticism, and with her identification of metatheater in

Feliz cautiverio as an example of those “vital aspects of his dramatic achievement.”

About it, she notes, “The work’s self-reflexivity . . . transforms it from a straightforward retelling of the Bible story into metatheater” (315). She also explores some of the implications of this self-reflexivity. On the one hand there is an interrogation of the nature of art and truth: “The [self-reflexive scene] underscores the problematic relationship between artistic representation and reality, or the version of reality that proclaims itself the truth” (315). She believes that Mira goes beyond a conventional

Baroque questioning of life and art to actually interrogate the authority of scripture:

By referring to liberties taken within the comedia itself, the dialogue

suggests the possibility liberties that might have been taken in the version

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generally accepted as definitive [i.e. the Bible]. Thus, it undermines the

authority of both texts . . . (315-16)

I believe that it is not the Bible itself whose authenticity Mira questions, but rather the exegetical apparatus surrounding scripture. Otherwise, I agree with A. Williamsen’s assessment. Valbuena’s early evaluation of Mira’s work needs to be challenged as new critical approaches and concerns emerge. Metatheatrical elements imply a subversive undercurrent in a play that some critics have discarded as poorly written or a mere retelling of the biblical story. A. Williamsen does not dwell extensively on Feliz cautiverio, however, nor does she raise the issue of identity in relationship to metatheater.

In the following discussion, I will make a more exhaustive analysis of the metadramatic elements in Feliz cautiverio, arguing that these elements imply an interrogation of the type of exegesis and identity construction traditionally inherent in Josephine adaptations.

In order to best demonstrate the range of metatheatricality evident in Feliz cautiverio, I will organize my analysis around Hornby’s list of devices cited above, adding to it the technique of deliberate anachronism. The only one of these that does not appear in the work is that of the play within the play, but this lack is compensated by the high emphasis on role-playing within the role that occurs throughout.

Role-playing is part of the scriptural text in two key moments. The first is when

Joseph’s brothers must play the part of the comforters when they report Joseph’s “death” to Jacob: “All the sons and daughters arose to comfort him” (Gen. 37:35), while hiding the fact that they were the culprits in his disappearance. They atone for this sin later as

Joseph plays the part of the stern vizier without revealing his true identity to his brothers: 211

“When Yosef saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he pretended-no-recognition of them and spoke harshly with them” (Gen. 42:7). This deception on Joseph’s part allows him to test his brothers and leads to his eventual reconciliation with them.

In many of the literary versions studied in previous chapters, this reconciliation is manipulated in such a way as to emphasize the central themes communicated in each adaptation. For example, in keeping with the General estoria’s theme of Semitic subordination to imperial Christianity, that work portrays Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers as symbolic of the reconciliation of Christ and the Jews made possible by the latter’s conversion. In the Coplas de Yosef, Joseph’s self-revelation coincides with a reference to the Purimic festivities that are so fundamental to the poem’s theme of the carnivalesque escape from persecution.

In Feliz cautiverio, the role-playing device is emphasized in these same moments of the story in such a way that it calls attention to itself. For example, the story is constructed so that when the brothers return to tell Jacob that Joseph is dead, Ruben is still unaware that they have sold him into captivity. There is a risk that he could put the other brothers’ story in jeopardy, but Simeon reassures them by saying,

Aunque fue sin que se hallara

presente Rubén, la venta

de José, y veis que a casa

se adelanta, por su riesgo

esta acción ha de callarla,

pues que le conviene. Lleguemos. 212

Finjamos todos. (I.21)68

This statement is a reminder of the theatricality of life: disimulatio is a necessity even for those who have nothing to hide. The contradiction here between motives and behavior questions the markers of identity accepted by society by raising the possibility of falsehood.

The second example of role-playing in the story is Joseph’s deception prior to revealing his true identity to his brothers. In Mira’s version, when Joseph sees his brothers, he calls the audience’s attention to his ploy in an aside:

Por abrazarlos me da

el corazón en el pecho

mil saltos. Pero, alborozo,

reprimamos los deseos;

bien es disimule ahora. (II.12)

Once again the work calls attention to the difference between inner motives and outward actions. In this case the audience becomes implicated in the deception as Joseph uses the first person plural command “reprimamos los deseos,” thus eroding the boundaries between life and theater.

The implication of the audience also reinforces the sense of dramatic irony in an example of engañar con la verdad when, while accusing them of espionage, Joseph declares to the brothers: “Bien os conozco” (II.13). They of course are unaware that he really does know them, and instead see it as part of his accusations. Even more daringly,

68 Roman numerals indicate act, numbers indicate page number. 213

Joseph says a few lines later, “[T]enéis traza de / vender a un hermano vuestro,” which is also the truth (II.14). This use of true statements as part of a deceptive role-playing, performed in front of a complicit audience, serves to blur the dichotomies of truth/fiction and audience/actors and thereby question the dichotomies that allow the construction of religious and national identity.

Another of Hornby’s metatheatrical devices is that of the ceremony within the play. Interestingly, the inverse was true for the sixteenth-century plays studied previously: these were performances within the ceremonies associated with Corpus

Christi. Mira, like Lope, writes his version in the comedia genre, thereby detaching it from the Eucharistic celebration. He further secularizes it by including a non-Christian ceremony in the action of the play. It is when Pharaoh, troubled by his dreams, goes to the temple of Serapis. The stage directions read:

Éntranse con el cuadro, con el que volverán a salir en el templo que se

descubrirá donde se arrodillarán todos ante el dios Serapis, que estará al

foro en forma de humano. (I.16)

Their prayers appear to be effective because, upon hearing Pharaoh’s complaints, the butler remembers Joseph from when he interpreted his dream in prison. This is in contrast with the biblical version, in which the butler is reminded when Pharaoh calls the magicians to interpret his dreams. By depicting an idolatrous ceremony on stage, Mira calls attention to the Christian Corpus Christi ceremonies associated with previous performances of the Joseph story. By portraying idolatry as effective, he makes

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ambiguous the boundaries between Catholicism and other religions, thereby questioning a major component of Spanish identity.

Another metatheatrical device that blurs boundaries is literary reference. For example, when the brothers sell Joseph, his reaction is to compare their actions to the monsters of stories:

¿De qué fiera se contara

temeridad tan impía,

atrocidad más tirana? (I.8, italics mine)

The allusion to the telling of stories reminds the audience that they are also viewing a retelling of a story. Later, when Joseph imprisons Simeon and sends the rest of the brothers back for Benjamin, Simeon imagines out loud his brothers’ journey and return:

y ya parece que veo

que van camino de casa,

ya llegan, ya sale el viejo

de mi padre a recibirlos,

los abraza placentero,

ya los pregunta por mí,

ellos cuentan el suceso,

y dicen que preso estoy,

y ya mi mujer con esto

se alegra, pues que se libra

de las riñas que solemos 215

tener, ya está convencido

mi padre, ya se ha resuelto

a que traigan el muchacho,

ya salen con él contentos,

ya están hacia acá de vuelta,

y ya en palacio los veo.

Hermanos, ¿ya habéis venido?

Si yo no estoy loco, duermo. (II.16)

Here Simeon confuses the story that he tells himself of the brothers’ journey with reality, and expects them to have returned in only the time that it took for him to tell the story.

Joseph finds him talking to himself and asks for an explanation. Simeon then tells a folk- like tale that further confuses reality and fiction:

Pues digo que había

un señor, y a un pastorzuelo

que tenía le envió

por un mandado a otro pueblo

de allí una legua distante.

Díjole: "Has de venir presto"

--porque mucho le importaba

al señor--. Dijo el mancebo:

"Señor, tomaré la burra,

y veréis que en un momento 216

voy y vengo despachado".

Dijo el señor: "Soy contento".

Fuése el mozo y el señor

se quedó consigo mesmo

haciendo cuentas. Decía:

"Ya va camino el mozuelo,

ya habrá llegado, ya vuelve,

ya entra en casa, ya le veo".

Y al decir "fulano", entró

por la puerta el pastorzuelo

diciendo: "Señor, ¿dó está

la albarda, que no la encuentro,

de la burra?" Con que a mí,

sobre poco más o menos,

me viene a pasar lo mismo;

pues deseo por momentos

ver venir a mis hermanos;

y ahora fuera lindo cuento

que no volvieran acá. (II.17, italics mine)

It is a source of laughter that Simeon thinks that simply narrating the actions of another can make that person arrive any faster, but the story calls attention to the unrealistic compression of time that is in fact a part of the play. The brothers do indeed return 217

shortly thereafter in terms of the real passing of performance time and, to point out the playwright’s manipulation, Simeon exclaims, “¡Con que habéis venido ya!” (II.21). He then addresses Benjamin, saying, “Poco has crecido chiquillo” (II.21), making reference to the fact that the actor playing Benjamin has not changed during the two hours of the play even though far more time has passed in the fictional events. These references to fiction and real life remind the audience of the play’s fictional nature.

Also contributing to the focus on real and fictitious time is the device of deliberate anachronism. Once again, this device is centered on the comic figure of Simeon. For example, when Joseph shares his dream of the stars, moon, and sun bowing down to his star (“se postraban adorando / mi majestad soberana”), Simeon scoffs, “¿El rey? ¡Mire usted qué rey! / Con sota se contentara” (I.4). The humor lies in the anachronous allusion to the playing card figures of the king and the page. Later, when Joseph arrests Simeon to hold him hostage until the other brothers return with Benjamin, Simeon laments, “¿Yo preso, y entre gitanos? / Buena ventura no espero.” (II.16). The anachronism is the reference to the Egyptians as Gypsies, which did not exist in biblical times. Both of these deliberate anachronisms call attention to the way that previous versions of the Joseph story have been manipulated to depict, instead of ancient events, very local and contemporary concerns.

The interrogation of the creative process is apparent in the play’s most obviously self-referential passage. In the opening scene, only five of the ten brothers appear on stage, and the following dialogue makes reference to this fact:

Simeón: 218

Pero digo, camaradas,

los demás hermanos, ¿cómo

no están aquí?

Rubén:

No hacen falta

con nosotros, pues a todo

bastamos sin ellos.

Leví:

No haya

quien de la historia eche menos

tan precisa circunstancia.

Simeón:

Nadie ignora, que a esto y cuanto

hicimos, todos se hallaban;

mas la cómica licencia

éstas y otras circunstancias

omite o añade, y siempre

que a la historia no haga falta,

para el adorno es preciso

que algún episodio haya. (I.2)

As cited above, A. Williamsen believes that this passage goes so far as to question the authority of the Bible. I believe, however, that it actually calls attention to the exegetical 219

tradition surrounding the scriptural text. As Simeon points out, the details of the biblical story are common knowledge, so the real focus is on the idea of “cómica licencia,” which allows for the manipulation of those details. The implication is that any version of the story except the biblical one involves some amount of creative license on the part of the exegete or poet. Indeed, Mira more specifically calls attention to the exegetes in particular with his emphasis on the non-biblical price for which Joseph was sold:

Judá:

Treinta monedas me dad.

Simeón:

Y es preciso que sean en plata. (I.7-8)

As discussed in the introduction, the price in Genesis is actually twenty, but the Glossa ordinaria changes it to thirty. Because Simeon is a comic figure, his interjection, more than simply drawing a parallel between Joseph and Jesus as the Christian exegetes do, instead calls attention to this process of Christianizing the text.

These and other metatheatrical devices in the play demonstrate that Feliz cautiverio is a well-developed metadrama. By drawing the audience’s gaze from the story itself to the creative process, Mira not only raises questions about the relationship between art and life, but also about the process of explaining scripture. Given the relationship between exegesis and identity construction in the tradition of Josephine adaptations up to that point, Mira’s metatheater also interrogates the processes by which

Spaniards had traditionally attempted to define themselves. All of this demonstrates that,

220

contrary to what many critics have said, Mira is a thoughtful and complex playwright, and his Feliz cautiverio is a rich and ambiguous text worthy of attention.

Theocentric Metatheater in Calderón’s Sueños hay que verdad son

Mira’s Feliz cautiverio, with its sense of relativity that interrogates even religious identity, falls within the category of anthropocentric, skeptical metatheater. Calderón’s

Sueños hay que verdad son is an auto sacramental based on both Feliz cautiverio and

Lope’s Los trabajos de Jacob, and it includes and expands upon much of the metatheatrical elements of the former.69 It is far from a mere copy of the two comedias, however; its originality lies in its conversion of Lope’s secular showmanship and Mira’s anthropocentric metadrama into a thoroughly theocentric metaplay capable of expounding the doctrine of the Eucharist.

Calderón is a playwright of such preeminence that he requires very little introduction. Although his auto Sueños hay has not received as much scholarly attention as many of his other works, its critical acclaim has been unanimous. As with Mira, it was

Ángel Valbuena Prat who set the critical tone. In his 1924 classification of Calderonian autos, Valbuena calls Sueños hay “Uno de los autos de más belleza y emoción, y que, entre los de asunto bíblico no tiene igual, como no sea en el famoso de La cena de

Baltazar . . .” (“Los autos” 166). Edward Glaser adds, in a 1966 article, “Sueños hay que verdad son stands out as one of the finest specimens of Calderón’s sacramental theater”

69 See McGaha, “La comedia” for side-by-side comparisons between passages from Lope and Mira’s versions and Sueños hay. 221

(77). As noted above, McGaha sees Calderón’s auto as vastly superior to Mira’s comedia.

In the introduction to his critical edition of the work, he says, “El auto Sueños hay que verdad son es una obra de arte espléndidamente unificada que da forma poética a la historia de Josef para enseñar lecciones morales y dogmáticas” (Calderón, Sueños 61). In a very recent article, Françoise Gilbert praises Calderón’s “muy fina comprensión del funcionamiento narrativo del relato del sueño bíblico . . . y en el provecho dramático que consigue sacar de ello” (481).

While these and other critics are impressed with Calderón’s artistry, a view that I share, none of them pays much attention to the metatheatricality of his version of the

Joseph story. Calderón’s play exemplifies each of Hornby’s devices listed above. In a sense, the entire play is a play within a play in which the allegorical figures on stage,

Castidad and Sueño, watch and comment on the drama of Joseph’s trials and triumphs. In fact, Calderón takes this device one step further, dramatizing Joseph’s vision of his father’s lament for him as a play presented to Joseph on one of the carros. The music and occasional sermonizing in the play is reminiscent of Mass, and given the sacramental purpose of the auto Hornby’s second device could be reversed to read “A play within a ceremony.”70 Role-playing within a role, as in Feliz cautiverio, is evident in Joseph’s interactions with his brothers before revealing his identity. There are a handful of literary references in the play, including a clear echo of Garcilaso de la Vega’s most famous sonnet in Jacob’s mouth: “¡Funestas, tristes, impuras/ prendas, por mi mal halladas!”

70 Speaking of autos in general, Melveena McKendrick says, “We must not for all this underestimate their ritual identity—candles burned throughout the performances even in broad daylight . . .” (Theatre 243-44). 222

(828-29). The play is generally self-referential throughout, the most notable example being, as in Feliz cautiverio, the references to the lack of verisimilitude of the dramatically necessary speed of the brothers’ journeys between Canaan and Egypt (1439-

44, 1668-72, 1742-43). Finally, Calderón borrows the same anachronistic use of the term

“gitano” as Mira to describe the Egyptians.

This very brief listing of examples of metatheatrical devices in Calderón’s play serves to demonstrate that it rates very high on the metadramatic “continuum on which plays may be placed at different points, depending on the degree of their self-reflexivity”

(Larson 207). My interest, however, is not so much in the level of metatheatricality in the play, but rather the purpose of these metadramatic elements. Previously, we saw that

Mira’s play reflects an anthropocentric view that makes the audience see, as Hornby puts it, “that identities are learned rather than innate” (qtd. in Thacker 10). Calderón’s view, on the other hand, is theocentric. Although he also points out the theatricality of life and its social roles, his purpose in doing so is to reaffirm the one reality in his ideology:

Catholic dogma. Lipmann, contrasting the general previous use of anthropocentric metatheater with Calderón’s adaptation of it, says the following:

The [life as a theater] metaphor’s popularity in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries has been seen as a reflection of the theatricalization

of life and as a symptom of sophisticated disillusionment. But in

dramatizing the commonplace analogy of world and theater in the form of

the auto sacramental, Calderón invests it with new meaning, while

reminding us of the significance it once had for its originators. In 223

Calderón’s work, the perception of life as a theatrical work of art is shown

to be potentially liberating, a means of transcending the confusion of

appearance and reality in the world. Calderón establishes the divine

perspective first; the human actors are allowed to share this perspective,

and their performances are successful or unsuccessful to the extent that

they are able to retain it while acting—to remember that they are part of

the entertainment for God. (Lipmann 241)

Calderón accomplishes this in Sueños hay in two ways. The first is through the use of two allegorical figures, Sueño and Castidad, whose conversations and theatrical manipulations serve to reveal the doctrinal lessons intended in the telling of the story.

The second is by developing a fascinating paradox that can be summarized in the following way: life, although it appears to be real, is actually theater. Dreams, although they appear to be false, can be a medium for revealing or understanding divine truth, and are therefore more real than life. This idea can be drawn out from an analysis of the treatment of dreams in the play.

Before continuing with that analysis, it is worth noting that Calderón’s religiously didactic purpose in the play is universally recognized by other critics. Indeed, as

Alexander A. Parker points out, “The asunto of every [Calderonian] auto is . . . the

Eucharist” (Allegorical 59). Glaser, talking about Sueños hay in particular, adds that

Calderón “presents various of its features as adumbrations of the Eucharist and thus endows the play with a profound dogmatic import” (45). Sullivan aptly refers to Calderón as a “glossator,” and explains: 224

The poetic metaphors are carefully chosen in order to enhance scripture

and to mine the nuances of meaning. Calderón, the glossator, builds on

scriptural truth with his frequent metaphors and allegories. The metaphors

and allegories “gloss” Scripture and serve as additional windows into the

world of God’s Providence that becomes increasingly accessible to man.

(38)

Finally, Francisco Peña Fernández says, “uno de los aspectos que más interesan al autor es iluminar teológicamente el dogma de la Eucaristía . . .” (208).

Although Sueños hay has in common with the sixteenth-century plays (Tragedia and Desposorios) the emphasis on the Eucharist, the purpose is once again different.

Whereas in the sixteenth-century plays communion is an element in the socially critical converso perspective, in this seventeenth-century auto it is linked to the existing social hierarchy embodied in the young new king, Carlos II. Calderón makes this connection in the loa, as the goddess Diana says to Olympus:

Sabrás (buelvo a dezir) que oy,

siendo el día en que celebra

la Fe en festivos aplausos

la mas rara, mas suprema

obra de aquel verdadero

Jupiter, cuya grandeza

Dios de Dioses le apellida,

es también el que en primeras 225

luzes de reciente Sol,

se restituye a la tierra,

en aumento de otras dichas,

la alegría de las fiestas,

que estuvieron algún tiempo,

si no quitadas, suspensas:

y assí, fuese este felize

nuevo Sol, oy en su esfera

prosigue por mi el afecto,

el culto, y la reverencia,

que de su gran Monarquía,

en loores de la Iglesia,

y triunfos de la Fe, es

la mas soberana herencia. (268)

This speech points out a number of things important to an understanding of the auto itself. First, there is recognition of a “verdadero Jupiter,” or God, behind the fictional material, implying that there is an absolute truth to be revealed. God is connected to the

“reciente Sol,” a reference to Carlos II, who was only eight years old at the time of the performance.71 The fact that the Corpus Christi festival “se restituye” on this occasion in

71 McGaha speculates on the possible connection between the performance of Desposorios in 1608 and Calderón’s version: “Es posible que Calderón asistiera a esa representación cuando contaba tan sólo ocho años; y que, muchos años más tarde, ya setentón, recordara la impresión que le había producido cuando le encargaron a escribir 226

1670 is because of a moratorium on plays during the previous five years. The absence of celebration motivated a particularly extravagant production once it returned. McGaha says, “Los autos [Sueños hay and El verdadero dios Pan] fueron montados con un lujo excepcional, gastándose en ellos 310.574 reales de vellón, mientras que en 1665 sólo se habían gastado 204.827, y en 1671 se gastarían 257.160” (Calderón 9). Calderón is sure to emphasize the special nature of this particular occasion as, in the last few lines of the passage, “Monarquía,” “Iglesia” and “Fe” are linked together and presented as the purpose of the festivities, including the auto sacramental about to be performed.

The recognition of God and king as the one acceptable reality is precisely the purpose of the theocentric metatheatricality to be found in Sueños hay. Calderón does not merely set out to reveal the constructedness of identity, as is the case with Mira, but rather to reveal the limitations of reason as opposed to revelation. Thacker sees

Calderón’s concept of the world as a stage as something that “specifically contrasted human life with the prospect of eternal bliss in heaven” (14). One way that he communicates this is through the use of allegorical characters. The opening dialogue, spoken by Sueño and Castidad, directs the audience towards a strict Counter-

Refermationist interpretation of what they are about to see. The play begins in medias res, with the question “¿Dónde me llevas?” Although it is Sueño directing the question to

Castidad, the audience is cued to ask the same question of the action on the stage. The answer becomes somewhat clearer as Sueño continues, musing out loud

un auto para representado ante el rey Carlos II, quien en ese momento tenía precisamente ocho años” (Calderón 27-28) 227

. . . ¿Dónde me llevas (a decir vuelvo)?;

porque siendo, como eres,

en tantos Sagrados Textos

triunfante laurel, que arrastra

los no fáciles trofeos

de la lid de los sentidos (11-17)

The mention of sacred texts helps to put the audience in a mindset for a scriptural lesson guided by one of the seven virtues. Castidad confirms that the purpose of her costume in particular, and of the production in general, “. . . a efecto/ habrá sido de hacer más/ representable un concepto” because, after all, “. . . no tiene el oírlo/ la fuerza que tendrá el verlo” (80-83, 95-96). Castidad further elaborates this idea in a second discussion with

Sueño:

Y pues lo caduco no

puede comprehender lo eterno,

y es necesario que para

venir en conocimiento

suyo haya un medio visible

que en el corto caudal nuestro,

del concepto imaginado

pase a práctico concepto,

hagamos representable

a los teatros del tiempo. . . . (287-96) 228

In a footnote to these verses, McGaha quotes J.A. Maravall as saying: “según piensa el hombre del XVII, la incorporación de un elemento plástico a un contenido didáctico refuerza grandemente las posibilidades de asimilación de éste último” (95). Thus,

Castidad acts as something of a spiritual guide, justifying the theatricality of the production as a means for understanding eternal concepts. This self-referentiality piques the interest in what these concepts may be.

A pattern then begins to develop by which a Christian type is represented in the action of the play, sometimes quite subtly, but then soon after explained to ensure that the audience does not miss it. For example the Baker and the Butler’s dreams, even in

Genesis, are about bread and wine, the elements of the Eucharist. In order to call attention to this connection, the playwright has Joseph say

De algún alto sacramento,

de algún misterio divino,

luces uno y otro dan,

pero tan en sombras hoy

que pienso que viendo estoy

vida y muerte en vino y pan. (535-40)

Rather than merely stating the connection between the dreams and the Eucharist, this passage encourages the audience to actively engage in scriptural exegesis by suggesting the possibility of such a connection.

Another image that subtly suggests Christian typology is Joseph’s position when separating the Baker and Butler as they begin to fight: “Al irse a embestir, se pone 229

JOSEF en medio, deteniendo al uno con una mano y al otro con la otra; se detienen los dos, mirándole suspensos” (588 acot.). As McGaha points out in his footnote, this position is reminiscent of the Crucified between two thieves. Although a fairly competent audience might understand the symbolism, Calderón calls attention to it by having Joseph say:

Cuando, a manera de cruz,

entre ambos me llego a ver,

segundo misterio muestra

ver que su furor impida

a la diestra el que es de vida,

y el de muerte a la siniestra. (591-96)

Yet another example of Christian typology explained through auto-referentiality is the scene in which Pharaoh appoints Joseph as his viceroy. As a choir sings “Bendito sea el que viene/ en el nombre del Señor” (1064-65), Pharaoh commands

aclamaciones festivas

echen las capas al suelo,

y de palmas y de olivas

corone el fértil verdor

sus sienes . . . . (1068-72)

This scene is a type of Christ’s Palm Sunday triumphant entry into Jerusalem. However, in order to ensure that the symbolism not be missed, Sueño enters and says

No en vano aquella divina 230

hermosa virtud [Castidad], que tanto

le favorece, me dijo

que, sus acciones notando,

vería en él lejanas luces

de asumpto que hoy embozado

hasta destinado tiempo,

anda en sombras . . . . (1078-85)

Once again, the interpretation is not given outright, but rather hinted at.

The didactic process in these examples is repeated throughout the auto, and they give a general idea of the didactic function of metatheater in this play. As mentioned above, another of Hornby’s devices used in the play is Joseph’s role-playing as Egyptian overlord. The climactic moment of anagnorisis for his brothers when Joseph steps out of his role parallels the experience of the audience at each moment of self-reference.72 It follows the same pattern: at first a subtle hint is given when Joseph calls Ruben by name.

Ruben responds: “Sin haberte dicho nunca/ ¿mi nombre sabes?” (1967-68). Just as the subtle metatheatric moments up to this point in the play have hinted possibilities to the audience and guided them to look beyond the apparent, Ruben and his brothers now begin to wonder if there is more than meets the eye. It is then that Joseph reveals his identity: “¿Qué os admira, qué os espanta / en mí este conocimiento / si soy Josef, vuestro hermano?” (1975-77). Given the connection between Ruben and the audience, it is not

72 Larson, paraphrasing Robert Nelson, says, “the interior play’s relationship to the exterior play parallels the relationship that exists between the outer play and reality” (213). 231

coincidental that the audience now experiences a complete anagnorisis immediately after

Ruben’s. Sueño appears on stage and for the first time directly interacts with the characters, explaining practically all of the Christian typology from the play. Of primary importance to the Corpus Christi celebration in which the auto was originally performed is the explanation that bread from the Baker’s dream is “divina carne” and the wine from the Butler’s is “la sangre del cordero/ sacrificado en el ara/ de la cruz . . .” (2069, 2070-

72). In the same way that Joseph suddenly reveals his identity, bread and wine are revealed to the audience on two of the carros, making clear the true theme of the auto: the Eucharist.

Calderón’s second method for emphasizing dogma in the play is by equating life with theater, and revealed truth with dreams. As Valbuena notes regarding the title of the auto:

La idea de los <> sacada de la entraña de nuestro

refranero, está revertida. No es la vida que es sueño; sino el sueño hecho

vida como en la obra dramática de Grillparzer. ¡También la trama de las

ilusiones y de los ideales puede realizarse, así como la verdad es, a veces,

solo una sombra! (“Los autos” 167)

This is in keeping with Baroque religiosity, in which, according to Andrés-Suárez, “El sueño es presentado como la máxima garantía del conocimiento, de la verdad, como el mejor vehículo para lograr la autenticidad, especialmente cuando los medios de lograr el conocimiento, fundados en la razón, se han revelado insuficientes” (15). This is why, in

Sueños hay, while life is presented as theatrical, Gilbert is able to abundantly prove that 232

“los sueños nunca se pueden caracterizar como ‘imagen falsa,’ ‘espejo distorsionador,’ sino al contrario como mensajes de índole divina transmisores de una verdad de realización aplazada” (479). In other words, dreams are connected to revelation.

Calderón allows the allegorical figure Sueño to explain this opposition between reason and dreams:

. . . No tan sólo

confuso, absorto y suspenso

mi entendimiento ha dejado

(que esto no es mucho, supuesto

que el sueño siempre fue obscuro

pasmo del entendimiento)

sino también convencido,

que es más. ¿De cuándo acá suelo

dejarme yo convencer

de la razón? Pero miento,

que en sueños ha revelado

Dios infinitos secretos; (353-64, italics mine)

While dreams obscure reason, this is not seen negatively because God’s “infinitos secretos” transcend reason. Later, the Baker, who is depicted as villainous and unkind, makes the mistake of trying to rationalize his dreams. As prelude to telling Joseph his dream, he says:

como en nuestra fantasía 233

siempre el sueño nos retrata

aquello que más se trata

en los discursos del día,

fue fácil que yo soñase

(que al fin panadero soy)

que del floreado pan que hoy

dispuse que se amasase . . . . (477-84)

As poetic justice for confusing dreams with artifice (“nos retrata”) and life (“los discursos del día”), the Butler is held accountable for his crimes and executed, as in the scriptural version.

Aseneth very nearly makes the same mistake later in the play. Joseph, who, previous to meeting Aseneth, sees a vision of the allegorical character Castidad in the form of Aseneth, believes that he has seen Aseneth before and tells her so. Aseneth responds:

Pues, ¿cuándo me dejé ver

yo de vos, ni cuándo yo

con vos hice acción que no

pudisteis agradecer? (1507-10)

After Joseph gives further details, she realizes that she is obviously not the one that he saw, and ventures an explanation:

. . . que alguna ilusión sería;

y pues en sueños estáis 234

tan maestro que os enseñan

a explicar lo que otros sueñan,

explicaos lo que soñáis. (1516-20)

Aseneth rightly identifies Joseph’s experience as an illusion. After all, it does form part of the action of the play—it is an illusion that the audience shares in. Her mistake, however, is in equating illusion with dreams. It is important to note that Calderón keeps the two separate by never dramatizing the action of any dream on stage. Joseph corrects her confusion:

Como la razón

publica en mis desempeños

que aunque los sueños son sueños,

sueños hay que verdad son. (1523-26, italics in orginal)

Joseph reminds her that dreams are in fact a vehicle for truth. Since Aseneth knows, however, that he truly has not seen her on the occasion that he describes, her speech expresses recognition of the fact that what he saw was not a dream, but rather an illusion:

¿Cómo puede ser verdad

que yo os hablase, ni viese,

ni que favor os hiciese,

cuando es tal mi vanidad

que si la hermosa deidad

de la Castidad hubiera

de tomar forma, no fuera 235

posible que otra tomara

que la mía, pues no hallara

quien más se la pareciera?

Ella y yo somos tan una

que nuestra gentilidad,

si retrata su deidad,

es de mí espejo en la luna. (1527-40)

Through this passage Calderón points out the artificial nature of the allegorical figure of

Castidad by referring to her portrait being done by “nuestra gentilidad.” Art is connected to the “real life” of the characters on stage by Aseneth’s proud affirmation that she and that portrait would be indistinguishable.

The entire conversation between Joseph and Aseneth reinforces the opposing linkages between life-theater and dreams-truth. This binary reinforced throughout the play makes it seem that the scriptural explications that Sueño gives at the end of the auto are in fact revelation, transcending any form of human reason. In reality, however, the typological interpretations communicated are part of the exegetical tradition sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Thus, while Mira’s version uses metatheater to point out the constructedness of identity, Calderón uses it to hide the constructedness of orthodox religious identity. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, from her peripheral vantage point as a criolla intellectual, is in a position to point out Calderón’s sophisticated strategy.

Metatheater and the Limitations of Exegesis in Sor Juana’s El cetro de José 236

Sor Juana, like Calderón, requires very little introduction as the premiere figure of the Spanish American Baroque. Yet, like Calderón’s Sueños hay, her Josephine auto El cetro de José has received far less attention than many of her other works. Some of the few analyses of this work tend to see it as mostly orthodox like Calderón’s version. For example, Lee A. Daniel focuses primarily on Sor Juana’s depiction of the Satan figure,

Lucero, as a way of dramatizing the triumph of Christ over the Devil (81). Octavio Paz also praises her depiction of Satan for its didactic effect: “It was a stroke of genius to have made the devils the interpreters of the holy story” (346). McGaha believes that El cetro’s overt message is “true understanding and spiritual sustenance can be won only by abject submission to the divinely instituted patriarchal order” (“Fragmented” 157).

Although he points out some aspects of the play that could be subversive to this message, he calls these a “Freudian slip” that “manages to insinuate itself into El cetro de José even as the playwright struggles mightily to enunciate its opposite” (“Fragmented” 159).

Ángel Valbuena-Briones praises Sor Juana’s rhetoric in teaching the dogma of the

Eucharist for being more “meditada y exacta” than Calderón’s, and says that “Sor Juana es más pedagógica, y por ello, más reiterativa que su precursor” (Valbuena-Briones 258-

59). Finally, Mauricio Beuchot, speaking of all three of Sor Juana’s autos sacramentales, says,

Éstas son piezas teatrales que transmiten y facilitan la comprensión de

ciertos dogmas cristianos a la gente que los veía representar, y a la que

había que entregar esos contenidos teológicos digeridos y bien dispuestos,

237

no sólo hechos comprensibles para la mentalidad de los espectadores, sino

con los adornos que los hicieran conmovedores y amables. (357)

While scholars have generally seen Sor Juana’s autos as ingenious expositions of orthodox doctrine, the loas that precede the autos, with their allegorical conversations on topics relating to the New World, have been read as subversive manifestations of criollo consciousness and female subjectivity. The main proponent of this reading is Georgina

Sabat de Rivers, who says that in these loas Sor Juana seeks to “instruir al mundo europeo, español en este caso, de la filosofía religiosa y civil del mundo precolombino suyo . . . ,” thus inverting the normal relationship between European evangelizers and indigenous proselytes (283). Paola Marín believes that in the loas “Sor Juana cuestiona la jerarquía cultural europea y la imposición por la fuerza del catolicismo” (549). For María

Dolores Bravo Arriaga, the loa to El cetro in particular reconciles “los dos tiempos, los dos espacios y las dos religiones en una convivencia en la que la antigua cultura sigue viva en sus costumbres . . .” (63). One rare dissenter to these evaluations is Carlos

Jáuregui, who argues that the loa to El cetro, “pese a lo dicho por la crítica, se permite pocas heterodoxias; hace una defensa de la integridad del dogma de la transubstanciación y favorece una crítica estereotípica del sacrificio mexica . . .” (212). Jáuregui does recognize, however, “posibilidades de trasgresión” in the loa to the auto El divino

Narciso, and says that in it “La cuestión en juego es la autoridad intelectual del letrado criollo . . .” (217-18).

Thus there is a contradiction in the general scholarly view that Sor Juana’s autos defend orthodoxy while the loas that introduce them question authority. I believe that this 238

contradiction requires some scrutiny. Although the scope of my study limits me to the

Josephine tradition, some comment on the general relationship between Sor Juana’s loas and autos is in order before proceeding with an analysis of El cetro.

Sor Juana was heavily influenced by Jesuit scholasticism, whose worldview Paz describes:

The spiritual and intellectual nucleus of the strategy was a vision of world

history as the gradual unfolding of a universal and supernatural truth. The

sum of that truth was Christianity and the passion of Jesus; in other parts

of the world and in other ages, the same mystery had been manifest, not

fully, but in symbols and signs and coincident marvels. (35)

Sor Juana dramatizes this worldview in her three autos. Each finds Eucharistic typology in a different context: in El cetro she demonstrates the exegetical process of finding

Christian types in the Old Testament. In El divino Narciso she shows that the same process can be applied to the pagan story of Eco and Narcissus. In El mártir del sacramento, San Hermenegildo, she applies the same methodology to an important moment in Spanish religious history.

Paz goes on to point out that the Jesuit tendency towards universalism also influenced the emergent criollo consciousness:

. . . through historical analogy, the erudition and imagination of the

seventeenth century Romanized Mexico-Tenochtitlán. The Aztec world

was transformed in the imperial mirror of humanism. Mexico-Tenochtitlán

was an American Rome and, like the Latin capital, was the seat of first a 239

pagan, then a Christian, empire. In the image of the imperial city of

Mexico one could recognize both criollo patriotism and the Jesuit dream

of Christian universalism embracing all societies and all cultures. (36)

Just as classical Roman mythology had the potential to be Christianized, classical Rome had the potential to become the capital of Christianity. In criollo-Jesuit thinking, therefore, Tenochtitlán is seen to have the same potential. What remains is the question of whether or not Aztec beliefs, like ancient Roman ones, can be read as a prefiguration of

Christianity. Sor Juana’s loa to El cetro answers this question in the affirmative.

The loa depicts a meeting between the allegorical characters Fe, Ley de Gracia,

Ley Natural, and La Naturaleza, who all agree to remove the idols from the New World’s altars and replace them with the Host. While they are in the process of calling down angels to do this, Idolatría appears, dressed as an Indian, to protest. After some argument,

Idolatría agrees that the indigenous gods are false and should be replaced with the

Christian God, but insists that human sacrifice not be done away with. When asked the reason for her demand, she replies:

Por dos causas:

la primera es el pensar

que las Deidades se aplacan

con la víctima más noble;

y la otra es que, en las vïandas,

es el plato más sabroso

la carne sacrificada, 240

de quien cree mi Nación,

no sólo que es la substancia

mejor, mas que virtud tiene

para hacer la vida larga

de todos los que la comen. (348-59)

Fe then asks if Idolatría would accept something that meets and exceeds these two requirements (“víctima más noble” and “hacer la vida larga”). Idolatría agrees, so Fe responds

Pues yo pondré en las Aras

un Holocausto tan puro,

una Víctima tan rara,

una Ofrenda tan suprema,

que no solamente Humana,

mas también Divina sea;

y no solamente valga

para aplacar la Deidad,

sino que La satisfaga

enteramente; y no sólo

delicias de un sabor traiga,

sino infinitas delicias;

y no solamente larga

vida dé, mas Vida Eterna. (396-409) 241

Fe then clarifies that she is referring to “La Eucaristía Sagrada” (412). The story of

Joseph is then presented as a means for explaining the Eucharist to Idolatría. Sor Juana’s other two loas similarly deal with New World themes in relationship to Christian doctrine.73

The relationship between the loas and the autos is therefore an integral one: all demonstrate the disparate sources that can be read through a Scholastic approach as

Christian typology. Given this unity among the works, it would seem that both the loas and the autos should share the goal of either supporting or subverting orthodoxy. I believe the latter to be true. As I hope to show in the following analysis, Sabat de Rivers’ statement about the loa to El mártir applies equally well to the auto El cetro:

La Sor Juana razonadora e intelectual avanzada nos dice que no hay que

fiarse de lo que se haya establecido como cierto porque descubrimientos

posteriores invalidan la ‘verdad’ de esas creencias, y esto se aplica, en

términos generales, a cualquier disciplina humana” (286).

El cetro de José, like Feliz cautiverio and Sueños hay, is also on the high end of the metadramatic continuum. There are multiple layers of plays within plays: the allegorical figures from the loa watch the allegorical figures of the auto, who in turn watch Joseph’s story unfold, along with flashbacks to other Old Testament figures. Ángel

Valbuena-Briones lists this device as one of the “pilares esenciales” of her autos (259).

There are a few ceremonies in the play, including Jacob’s taking of an oath from Joseph

73 See Sabat de Rivers; Marín; Bravo Arriaga; Jáuregui; Grossi; and Paden for more extensive discussions of the loas. 242

by having him place his hand on his thigh, saying “en los juramentos nuestros/ es el más solemne rito” (1540-41). Once again, the best example of role-playing is Joseph’s as he hides his identity from his brothers. There are vague real-life references, particularly in the loa, which seem to allude to the contemporary Indian uprisings in New Spain

(McGaha, Story of Joseph 188). Finally, the play is extremely self-referential, constantly reiterating its own purpose and methods:

. . . una historia sagrada

de un Auto Sacramental

y Alegórico, en que trata

mi amor hacerte visibles

las Profecías que hablan

de este Sagrado Misterio. (“Loa” 432-37)

This type of allegorical self-referentiality represents a complete mastery of

Baroque conventions on the part of the Mexican nun. The use of these conventions, however, has far-reaching implications for Sor Juana. As mentioned above, in Calderón

Baroque conventions are a tool for the reinforcement of orthodoxy. In an article on the relationship between the Baroque and criollo conscious, Mabel Moraña explains:

Tanto para la minoría peninsular como para la creciente oligarquía criolla

el Barroco constituyó sobre todo un modelo comunicativo a través de

cuyos códigos el Estado imperial exhibía su poder bajo formas sociales

altamente ritualizadas. El código culto, alegórico y ornamental del

243

Barroco . . . constituyó así . . . el lenguaje oficial del Imperio, un “Barroco

de Estado” al servicio de una determinada estructura de dominación. (30)

Thus the imitation of European Baroque by New World artists represents a strategy for social acceptance and ascendancy, which to a degree is apparent in Sor Juana’s work.

What is even more apparent is Moraña’s concept of the “’fenómeno del retorno’ por el cual los sectores dominados en determinado momento de la historia comienzan a activarse hasta generar respuestas sociales diferenciadas” (31). She says that these social responses tend to “impugnar el discurso hegemónico y los principios de legitimación en los que éste se apoya” (31). This new counter-discourse can be difficult to perceive because it is made up of many of the same conventions as the dominant discourse.

According to Moraña, Sor Juana is the best example of this phenomenon: “en ella convergen una actualización precisa del código barroco y una conciencia aguda de la marginalidad” (44). She explains that the appropriation of Baroque conventions “toma connotaciones políticas cuando esos modelos dominantes adquieren, digamos, opacidad, llamando atención sobre sí mismos” (48). Thus the most subversive works written in the

New World are likely also to be the most metatheatrical.

I therefore disagree with McGaha’s assertion that

Sor Juana’s most formidable adversary was not the various male

authorities who sought to frustrate her pursuit of knowledge and her

244

literary career but her own serious doubts and reservations about the

morality and appropriateness of those activities. (“Fragmented” 151)74

I believe that Sor Juana metatheatrically calls attention to Baroque conventions in order to intentionally subvert traditional structures of authority and defend her own intellectual activities. In her play Baroque conventions, rather than highlighting didactic messages, instead make opaque those messages and draw attention to the subjectivity inherent in traditional scriptural exegesis.

One of the first indications that conventions are being highlighted is the deviation of focus from the Genesis story to its exegesis and dramatization. As I described above, in the loa the allegorical character Fe promises to explain the Eucharist to Idolatría “En una historia sagrada/ de un Auto Sacramental/ y Alegórico . . .” (“Loa” 432-33). This line carries a certain ambiguity. On the one hand, “historia sagrada” could refer to the play’s plot. On the other hand, it could be read to mean that rather than being a play about sacred history, the work is described here as being the history of an auto. The second of these readings implies an inversion of purpose and emphasizes that it is not the Biblical account itself that is under scrutiny, but rather how that story is told. This focus is apparent keeping in mind that the allegorical figure Lucero is given nearly three times more lines than Joseph himself (McGaha, “Fragmented” 158). When parts of the Joseph story are dramatized, they are severely truncated. For example, the play begins in medias

74 Although this is McGaha’s main thesis, he presents some evidence and makes certain assertions to the contrary: “. . . throughout the auto one senses a stubborn undercurrent of resistance to the play’s myopic assurance that there is a single correct answer to every question” (“Fragmented” 158). 245

res with the brothers discussing their decision to sell Joseph. The scene does almost nothing to introduce the characters; not even their names are mentioned. The extremely brief introduction to the characters and plot of the ostensible subject matter of the play is followed by a lengthy and thorough introduction to the allegorical figures that belong to the frame story. Scene II is careful to elaborately explain the name and function of each of these figures: Lucero, his wife Inteligencia, mistress Ciencia, and daughters Conjetura and Envidia. Whereas in Calderón’s play the allegorical figures tend to frame scenes of the Joseph story, here they tend to overshadow it. This leads to the question of what these figures represent. In Michael McGaha’s English translation of this play he translates

“Lucero” as “Lucifer,” and rightly so given the mention of his residence in the “Abismo” and other Biblical references to his role as Satan (38). His female companions, however, have more abstract names, three of which seem to be the very tools used in Biblical exegesis: Inteligencia, Ciencia, and Conjetura. It is these three who guide Lucero as he, like Catholic theologians, searches for Christian typology:

¿qué tipo o qué figura,

como a quien ve de lejos la pintura,

descubre misterio?

Y pues el atenderlo es ya forzoso,

de ti, Ciencia, me valgo,

para ver si inferir podemos algo; (85-90)

primicias le dará a la Conjetura, 246

para que de uno y otro antecedente

saque, si no evidente,

probable conclusión . . . . (96-100)

muéstrame, Inteligencia, otra figura,

a ver qué de ella tu discurso apura. (220-21)

These three passages emphasize the interpretive roles of each of these qualities when applied to scriptural accounts. As I discussed above, Sor Juana had abundant experience in applying these exegetical techniques to scripture, mythology, and history. It appears then that Sor Juana, like modern critics, is aware of the interpretive heavy-handedness applied to the Old Testament in Baroque theater:

Los hechos narrados en los libros históricos del Antiguo Testamento,

gracias a la interpretación simbólica (en conformidad con la patrística

tradicional y la exégesis bíblica de la época medieval) que los consideraba

anunciaciones proféticas del Mesías, servían para procurar asuntos a los

autos . . . . (Parker 48-49)

The Mexican playwright emphasizes the intrusive nature of traditional exegesis in

El cetro. Throughout the play the allegorical representations of interpretive tools interrupt or filter the story’s action. For example, in what is normally one of the most dramatically charged scenes of the Biblical account, Joseph’s resistance to Potiphar’s wife’s advances, the action is interrupted and influenced by Lucero and his entourage:

Pues con apariencias falsa 247

a Putifar asistimos

como crïados de casa,

donde más cómodamente

puedan nuestras asechanzas

ver lo que pasa en Josef (416-21)

By joining the action, the allegorical figures not only get a closer look at what is happening, but they begin to control it. This metadramatic disruption of the story by the frame story implies a criticism of the traditional distortion of history by theologians. Sor

Juana further calls attention to this exegetic intrusion when, rather than dramatizing on stage important moments such as Pharaoh’s dreams and Joseph’s revealing of himself to his brothers, she has Inteligencia recount them in third person.

Having called attention to the intrusive nature of Baroque scriptural interpretation,

Sor Juana points out its limitations. For example, Ciencia is placed in opposition to

Sabiduría in order to demonstrate her shortcomings:

Lucero: la Ciencia en mí, que perderse

no pueda, puede a lo menos

minorarse, obscurecerse,

cuando Dios intenta que algo

ignore yo, mayormente

aquella parte que toca

a los Secretos Celestes,

que llaman Sabiduría (1247-54) 248

Thus, Ciencia is unreliable because it can diminish at times, and because, unlike

Sabiduría, it cannot comprehend “Secretos Celestes.” Conjetura is placed in opposition to

Revelation when the first proves incapable of interpreting Pharaoh’s dream: “ . . .

Astrológica pericia, / siendo humana conjetura, / no Revelación Divina” (767-69).

Finally, Profecía appears to be in opposition to Inteligencia, since Lucero is deprived of the latter when the former speaks: “Tan confuso, tan absorto/ de oírlo estoy, que parece/ que mi Inteligencia falta” (1238-40). Given Sor Juana’s intense intellectual activities, it seems hard to believe that she would attempt to diminish the importance of intelligence, knowledge, and conjecture. Since the text seems to indicate that this is the case, it becomes apparent that she is not criticizing these qualities per se, but rather pointing out their subjectivity. This recognition of the subjective nature of theology is apparent in a letter that she wrote to her confessor:

que del Cielo hacen muchas llaves y no se estrechó a un solo dictamen

sino que hay en él infinidad de mansiones para diversos genios, y en el

mundo hay muchos teólogos, y cuando faltaran, en querer más que en

saber consiste el salvarse, y esto más estará en mí que en el confesor.”

(qtd. in Bravo Arriaga 55, italics in original)

The idea of room for “diversos genios” could include herself. By pointing out the number of theologians and minimizing the importance of knowledge for salvation, she is criticizing the Counter-Reformationist discourse that, although based on the subjective elements of Biblical exegesis instead of wisdom, revelation, and prophecy, presents its interpretation as conclusive and unquestionable. 249

Such a criticism is not surprising from a criolla woman who through her work often to one degree or another defends her own artistic and theological activities. If she is using the same subjective methodology as the European males who dominate religious discourse, then there is no justification for repressing her work. One of the last metatheatrical elements in the play subtly calls attention to this point. Profecía, explaining the apparently extra-Biblical scene in which Jacob kisses Joseph’s scepter laden with bread, says:

(Pero por si algún curioso

quiere averiguar prolijo

la erudición, en lo que

del Cetro dejamos dicho,

sobre el Génesis, Rabí

Moisés nos lo dejó escrito,

citando el lugar de Pablo

sobre “adorar el fastigio”. (1625-32)

This passage is the only direct reference to any scriptural commentator and, significantly, this commentator is not a Church Father or Doctor, or even a Christian for that matter, but rather the Jewish intellectual Maimonides.75 She justifies this reliance on a Jew by pointing out that it is what is said, and not who says it that matters:

75 Also significantly, there are a number of Midrashic elements in the play, such as the straw in the river as an indication of bread in Egypt (850-53) and the reference to Joseph’s cup as a tool for divination (1287-88). (See also Girón-Negrón and Minervini 249-251.) 250

Y aunque no se debe en todo

dar crédito a los Rabinos,

como aquesta circunstancia

no puede parar perjuicio

a ningún dogma, antes bien,

en el acomodaticio

sentido, a la devoción

puede ayudar, me he valido

de ella.) . . . . (1625-41)

Here the Tenth Muse ironically points out the limitation of a dominant discourse that disallows minority voices even when those voices make an important contribution to one’s spirituality.76 One could easily substitute “mujeres” or “criollos” for “Rabinos” in the above passage.

The three works studied in this chapter culminate the Josephine tradition, but in different ways. Mira’s metatheater is anthropocentric and calls attention to the processes of identity formation that I have studied in previous chapters. Calderón appropriates and polishes many of the same metadramatic elements, but re-works them from a more

76 McGaha gives a somewhat related and very interesting analysis of this same passage. Apparently the very title of the play is based on a mistranslation in the Septuagint that Paul quotes in Hebrews. The implication is that Paul “could be mistaken in other areas— such as his views about the proper role of women—as well” (Coat 194). Jeremy Paden interprets the passage to mean that Sor Juana is reducing Paul to the status of rabbi, which I do not see textual justification for. I agree, however with his statement that “in constructing her allegory on Hebrew’s erroneous reading of Genesis, Sor Juana highlights the textual nature of allegory” (205-206). 251

theocentric perspective in order to present religious orthodoxy as the result of revelation instead of reasoned theology. Since Catholicism is an integral part of Spanish national identity, his metatheater reveals the constructedness of all versions of identity except the orthodox one. His goals are therefore similar to those of the medieval authors, even though his strategy is more sophisticated. Sor Juana’s objective, on the other hand, has more in common with that of the New Christian playwrights of the sixteenth century in the sense that she, like them, is marginalized and struggling for inclusion. Her metatheater calls attention to the constructedness of theology in order to argue for her right as a criolla intellectual to participate in that field of study.

252

Conclusion

The story of Joseph had great importance to early Spanish culture. Medieval scholars from each of the three monotheistic religions diligently collected and compiled its details. Joseph was celebrated next to other important scriptural heroes in Jewish and

Muslim gatherings, and his story was popular source material for the autos sacramentales performed during Corpus Christi. Some of the preeminent playwrights of the Spanish

Golden Age chose the tale for stage adaptation. In addition to prose, poetry, and drama,

Joseph’s story was also retold in painting.77 So ubiquitous was the tale that the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo compares La Malinche’s life to Joseph’s as if the latter were common knowledge.78

In spite of the popularity of the Joseph story during the Spanish middle ages and

Golden Age, relatively few scholars in recent years have paid much attention to it, and none before Michael McGaha attempted to study its trajectory from Alfonso el Sabio to

Sor Juana. Most of the studies published have been analyses of individual works, and, with a few exceptions, have mainly focused on identifying each work’s source material or commenting on issues of philology or literary quality. McGaha’s two anthologies of

Spanish adaptations of the Joseph story broke this trend by contextualizing the works as both part of a single tradition and products of the circumstances in which they were produced. Now that McGaha has introduced these texts to a broader audience and shown

77 McGaha’s edition of Sueños hay contains several portraits of the sons of Jacob painted by the seventeenth-century Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán. 78 “Y esto me parece que quiere remedar a lo que acaeció con sus hermanos en Egipto a Josef, que vinieron a su poder cuando lo del trigo” (150). 253

their importance in Spain’s cultural and literary tradition, the time has come for a closer look at more of the issues at work in them.

My contribution to this new avenue of investigation has been to examine in particular the theme of identity formation in the Spanish Josephine tradition. Working under the assumption that each version of the story has more to tell us about the concerns of its author and milieu than about ancient Israel, I have analyzed the ways in which each work manipulates source details in order to construct or deconstruct ethnic or national identity. I find that each version deals with the issue of identity by either defining one group against another, arguing for the expansion of such definitions, or questioning the nature of identity.

In Chapter 1 I examined the incipient hegemonic discourse in Alfonso el Sabio’s

General estoria, in which his team of scholars actively connect ancient imperialism to contemporary political projects while subordinating classical and Semitic sources to a

Hispano-Christian narrative. The result is a sense of imperial inevitability that justifies the king’s ambitions and participates in the early formation of Spanish national identity.

The roughly contemporary Jewish Sefer Ha-Yasar seems to undermine this sense of inevitability by presenting a different view of history: one in which the Jewish characters are depicted as strong and warlike while the Christians’ Edomite forebears are shown as weak and cowardly. I argue that this depiction serves as a boundary-maintaining mechanism to prevent assimilation between the two communities. Finally, in the Morisco

Leyenda de José, there is a return to the Alphonsine interest in compiling details from various sources. The difference is that, while Alfonso gathers many non-Christian 254

sources and subordinates them to his worldview, the beleaguered author of Leyenda insists on citing every Muslim authority, even if the result defies narrative logic. This desire to preserve the knowledge of a people represents an act of cultural self-defense against mounting pressure to assimilate or emigrate.

The second chapter is a continued study of medieval Semitic texts, although this time they are works of narrative poetry. These works display an interesting balance between appropriation and boundary maintenance: they adopt the typically Christian cuaderna vía and adapt it to the concerns of their respective communities. The Jewish

Coplas de Yosef, which formed part of the Purim celebration, share with that festival a

Bakhtinian sense of temporary liberation from the stark realities of fourteenth-century

Jewish life. The Muslim Poema de José, on the other hand, embraces suffering as a defining characteristic of religious identity.

The sixteenth-century marked the end of an official Jewish and Muslim presence in Spain, and the result was a new binary of Old and New Christians. In Chapter 3, I examined the New Christian or converso perspective apparent in two auto sacramental versions of the Joseph story: La tragedia Josephina and Los desposorios de José. These plays question Old Christian superiority and call for a more inclusive definition of

Spanish identity by emphasizing the equalizing power of the Eucharist and critiquing Old

Christian hypocrisy. Lope de Vega then appropriates the elements of the converso perspective and adapts them to a more secular form of social criticism in his Los trabajos de Jacob.

255

In the fourth chapter I examined how the Baroque’s tendency towards artistic self- reflection influences the late seventeenth century’s versions of the Joseph story, demonstrating that this metatheather has varying functions. Antonio Mira de Amescua’s

El más feliz cautiverio is a well-developed anthropocentric metaplay that interrogates the creative process and, by extension, calls attention to the formation of religious identity in general. Pedro Calderón de Barca appropriates these metatheatrical elements and adapts them to a theocentric perspective that promotes Catholic orthodoxy. Sor Juana Inés de la

Cruz, in turn, takes metatheatricality to an extreme in order to allegorize the work of theologians and assert her right as a criolla intellection to study theology.

While this focus on identity in the Josephine tradition presents a new approach to the works themselves that enriches our understanding of them and their function in

Spanish society, it also shows their importance to the fields of medieval and Golden Age studies. The above summary demonstrates that the examination of several versions of the same biblical story allows for a comparison of identity formation over a broad spectrum of cultures and time periods. Such a comparison is not always possible with more canonical works, which limits their usefulness in analyzing the evolution of the theme.

Given that identity issues are of interest to contemporary criticism, these findings suggest that the Josephine tradition should have a more prominent place in our studies of early

Spanish literature and culture.

The contribution of my study is therefore two-fold. On the one hand, it expands the previously limited scholarly conversation about the Spanish Josephine tradition by examining an unexplored issue in it. On the other hand, it demonstrates the relevance to 256

contemporary scholarship of that popular and influential tradition.

257

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VITA

Charles P. Patterson graduated from Logan High School, Logan, Utah. He received his

Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude in Spanish from Utah State University, Logan,

Utah in 2003. In the fall of 2004 he enrolled in the Masters program in Hispanic literature at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he passed his comprehensive exams with distinction and graduated in May 2006. He entered the

Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin in September 2006, and has twice received the Carrie Lee Kennedy Fellowship.

Permanent Address: 2501 Lake Austin Blvd. Apt. A104, Austin, TX 78703

This manuscript was typed by the author.

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